Big license
or original
score?
Which is more effective for a brand:
music they can own or songs we all love?
We analyzed the academic research
and here’s what we discovered.
Ever since artists have been “selling out” their music to brands, television, ads, and anything else that pays, the debate between the licensing companies and the old guard music houses has existed. Which is better, new music or songs we all know? There seems to be a good bit to suggest the answer is: yes, both are good. But we wanted to know what the research actually says. So we dug in and collected some of the most relevant, empirical studies on the subject and have summed it up below.
The questions to ask:
What sticks?
Hahn & Hwang (1999) tested message recall by varying how familiar the viewers were with the music contained in commercials. They found that people already familiar with the music processed the target information more efficiently and had better recall.
How personally significant is the music?
Allan (2006) also tested message recall on commercials with popular music, but changed up the vocals/lyrics in the songs. Listeners were asked to rate a particular song in terms of how personally significant it was to them. They then viewed a commercial with one of three versions of that song: a version with the original vocals, a version with altered, brand specific vocals, or a version with no vocals. Again, for people who rated the song as highly significant (i.e. knew the song well), the original vocal version yielded higher message recall. For those who rated song as low in significance, the altered vocal version yielded higher recall.
The conclusion that familiar music leads to higher recall seems undisputed. However, does message recall necessarily equal a positive brand attitude?
Can inconsistent music invalidate brand message?
Park & Young (1986) tested the effect of commercial music on brand attitudes depending on varying levels of cognitive requirements on the part of the viewer. If the commercial required more mental resources, music usually had a distracting effect and invalidated the credibility of the brand. For example, in a pharmaceutical commercial in which the viewer is required to process a higher amount of verbal information, music left the viewers feeling less trusting of the brand. On the flip side, if the viewer was not highly cognitively engaged, music had a facilitative effect, grabbing attention and giving the more expected attitude benefits.
What do artists’ fans think of music associated with brands?
Scott (1994); Pennell and Englis (1994) both explored consumer responses to popular music and concluded that people with pre-existing positive connotations with a particular song tended to object to its commercial use on the basis of rejecting its “co-optation” (extending the intended message of the song to a brand).
The processing of music is a learned skill, one that draws on past experiences and the emotions and contexts associated with them. Sterile, experimental environments aren’t the best learning tools. What we can take from the research is that a sense of novelty in music is stimulating and effective at gaining attention. Also, music that evokes a sense of familiarity tends to yield better ad recall, presumably because the familiar music is demanding less mental resources of the viewer/listener. Considering these two points together, we can assume that there is an appropriate balance between familiarity and novelty that can only be determined on a case-by-case basis.
