Ghetto-blastin'

 There have always been speculations saying how radios would be phased out sooner than expected; and that, my friends, might actually be the awful truth. But when talking about the “now,” we know how radios have become a big chunk of our everyday lives and we just don’t know it. There are times when we just have to ghetto-blast our favorite FM radio stations to keep us entertained or possibly keep us awake while driving. These forms of entertainment in radios do not only come from the conversations of radio DJs or our favorite songs that randomly play in a continuum of poorly selected song collection. In fact, entertainment might also come from the witty or annoying commercials squeezed in between tracks. And this is what marketing strategists spend billions on – to influence your recall, recognition, and perception of products endorsed during this radio time, which we actually find most invaluable.  

Past researches have shown that product-related imagery processing may facilitate learning of product-related information contained in advertisement. Thus, marketing researchers spend an ample amount of time in discovering the elements within the commercial that might actually affect your perception of the product. A research by Miller and Marks (1992) talks exactly about that. Their research discusses how sound effects provided within the commercial can significantly influence your mental imagery and in effect, influence your feelings and attitudes, and long-term memory storage toward the product. Their research compares the changes in the listener’s recall, recognition and feelings on radio commercials with or without sound effects. Their hypothesis shows that sound effects on radio commercials can elicit greater imagery processing, stronger emotional reactions, stronger attitude (more favorable or unfavorable), and greater learning in brand information. The participants in the experiment were exposed to two conditions – one condition consisted of a radio commercial with a verbal message alone (lower imagery stimulus) while the other condition included a sound effect followed by an identical verbal image (higher imagery stimulus).

Results have shown that sound effects have indeed provided greater mental imagery of the product.  When mental imagery processing was associated with stronger positive emotions, more favorable attitudes about the commercial resulted. In addition, increased imagery activity resulted in greater learning of brand information and seems to be encoded with more elaborate sensory memory structures in the long-term memory. However, it was also revealed that emotional reactions do not necessarily mean they elicit positive emotional feelings. In the commercial provided in the experiment about car tires, a screeching sound served as the sound effect. A number of participants actually found this screeching sound related to car crash or painful memories of their past – an unintended consequence. Advertisers then must use caution in the ways in which they employ sound effects in commercials.

While searching for the best possible radio commercial in YouTube that can be related to this research, I came across this Lipton Tea radio commercial in the United States. Its sound effects at the end have clearly caught my attention – considering that I have a short attention span that I jump from one radio commercial in YouTube to another without even finishing the whole track. And exactly as I type this in, I still keep on humming the tune in my head and I imagine myself drinking my iced tea as I endure the scorching heat and brutal sunburn at the beach. Moreover, I can anticipate that every time I would see a Lipton tea bag, I would eventually burst into song by humming the tune at the end. No wonder sounds have a great impact in our perception of things. Thus, if you think that marketing strategists spend useless time trying to come up with witty sounds to accompany a commercial because we find them invaluable, then saddle up hombre, sounds are more powerful than you give it credit for.

References

Miller, D. W., & Marks, L. J. (1992). Mental Imagery and Sound Effects in Radio Commercials. Journal of Advertising, 21(4), 83-93. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.