Music sets the tone for your entire event and it’s one of the most powerful tools for impacting emotion.
How You Can Use Music To Improve Your Next Brand Activation
Ask any marketer out there, there’s a lot that goes into planning large scale and even small-scale events. Event planners and experiential agencies focus their time and energy for long periods of time months or even up to a year on deciding how an event will adequately flow, from the schedule of your speakers to the floor layout, activations and breakouts, bringing in the right art, designing the spaces to function properly.
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Music moves the brain to pay attention, Stanford study finds
Using brain images of people listening to short symphonies by an obscure 18th century composer, a research team from the Stanford University School of medicine has gained valuable insight into how the brain sorts out the chaotic world around it. The research team showed that music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating the event in memory. Peak brain activity occurred during a short period of silence between musical movements – when seemingly nothing was happening.
“We constantly consume some form of music whether we are aware of it or not, we will end up in situations where we participate in subconscious listening. ” – Eventbrite
This could be at the supermarket, with music playing over the shoppers, during TV programs, etc. It could also be at an event or conference where there is either a live band or background music being played at the venue. All of this subconscious or inactive listening has an impact on how we behave. Which is fascinating.
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One of the most often overlooked components which are felt by everyone is the music.
Music sets the tone for your entire event and it’s one of the most powerful tools for impacting emotion. Music actually provides a critical undercurrent of emotion that can benefit any meeting, event or experience. When it comes to curating the perfect playlist, here are a few things to consider.
-Solidify Memories
One of the wonderful things about music is that it creates strong associations and people can call back memories of an experience when they hear a particular song. It’s helpful to know that when choosing music for your event that you play a soothing or impactful song during times you desire to leave a strong impression.
-Boost Moods
Music is a great took for changing negative moods or emotions and getting people into a state of positivity.
-Create Anticipation
Music creates suspense and anticipation for a segment or meeting. You can use music to prepare people for what’s next. You may have soft music playing during one segment and more exciting music for another to create a contrast.
-Keep It Consistent
Although you can have fun choosing different music selections, you do want to keep it consistent with the purpose of the meeting and the audience that is attending. Switching from jazz to pop to reggae will confuse and distract your audience. Stick to one genre and try to keep the messaging and branding consistent so it doesn’t feel disruptive.
How does music at events affect people’s behavior?
We mostly think of music as pure entertainment, but marketers have been using it to influence our behavior for decades. It’s a particularly prolific strategy in consumer goods industries, but the principles can easily be applied to the event industry.
Using the right type of music can potentially become very profitable and there’s been a lot of research into exactly how different types of music affect behavior within a specific environment. Particular types of music can make us move through an environment faster, stay longer, change our perception of queue times or make us spend more money.
We love combining music and experiential marketing. They’re our two favorite things. If you have questions about Experiential Marketing and music, contact us today! We’d love to partner with you!