The New Era of Music: 5 Reasons Your Brand Needs a Music Strategy

As marketers, we always strive to capture the attention of the right person, at the right moment. Many choose to achieve this through increased reach and frequency, but those tactics pale in comparison to the power of creating deep, emotional connections with an audience.

Whether the goal is to move someone to shift their thinking or to take a specific action, at the end of the day we must ask ourselves one thing: did we make a meaningful connection?

But how can we do this? Aligning your message to a shared passion point is one way to bring emotion and meaning to an ad campaign. That is precisely why music is such a powerful advertising tool and strategy. Yet in many instances, the use of music or audio is overlooked because a brand doesn’t have a specified music strategy or budget.

Let’s make a resolution to no longer forgo the benefits of pairing your brand message with content that ignites passion and engagement? This is the year to make music part of your marketing plan.

1. A great storyteller. Audio is the one of the oldest and most natural ways to tell a story. So, when brands can harness the innate ability that any form of audio--from voice, to music, to advertising--has to jump-start the imagination, they will give their target audience a personal and memorable experience. Several speakers during CES 2017 spoke about the power of sound in storytelling. In relation to virtual reality, “sound can really dig deep into our emotional responses,” said Charlotte Jones, Executive Producer at BBC Earth Productions.

2. Music grabs attention. When was the last time music captured your attention? (If you made it to Pandora’s CES party featuring Snoop Dogg, we hope it was within the last week.) Whether listening live, on the radio or online, music has the crazy ability to bring an audience together. On Pandora alone, we have about 100 million people coming to our site every quarter to connect with music.

3. Engagement follows attention. The average person spends over 21 hours a week listening to audio and music--and that’s expected to double by 2020!¹ New advancements in streaming, combined with an increased demand for personalized listening experiences, has led to a dramatic uptick in the amount of time people spend with audio--and music in particular.

4. Musical connections. The love of music is a universal language that transcends age, geography and culture. But the real magic is not in its ubiquity (although, that’s pretty cool too!), but in its power to move and connect people. This happens in a physical sense at concerts and festivals, but also individually. Catherine Balsam-Schwaber, Chief Content Officer at Mattel revealed at CES that she was most excited about the possibilities of music in 2017. “Music is making a resurgence in everything that we do. It’s so much of an underpinning of our collective experiences.”

5. An all-day activity. Advertisers struggle to reach their audience without interrupting them. But with music as an all-day soundtrack, it allows advertisers to seamlessly integrate their message into moments that make sense for the listener and the brand.

In today’s world of connected devices, content options and competing brand messages, music cuts through the clutter like no other media can. Let music be the way your brand tells its stories and connects with consumers in 2017.

Did you miss any of the action from this year’s CES? Catch up by following #PandoraCES or reading our recap blogs from Day 1 and Day 2.

^{Sources: 1 Magna Global, Media Economy Report - Capturing Consumer Attention in an On Demand World, June 2016}