Market survey on sound in media

Sound is a great way to create attention and as a result consumers are exposed to sound almost all the time. Do you know the feeling when some kind of sound stops and you suddenly realize how much noise there is around you? .. you instinctively relax in your body.

Some companies invest in specially made "corporate music" with the intent of creating recognition and affiliation to the brand. I have previously worked from the sound bureau's side and I sensed an unspoken precondition, from all three sides (company, advertising agency and sound bureau), that:

"sound is good".

... Is it?

I have made such a survey which is running right now. I am looking forward to see if I'm the only Dane who doesn't want sound on online banners and power point presentations, and prefers to be in control of the sounds played in consumer controlled media.

If you are Danish, please fill it out on

http://web.trictrac.com/servlet/trictrac?e=GdIDDp8zdFPDq8Ldm

If you ask me personally, I have a feeling that consumers prefer some media without sounds. And I think its important for companies to make this research of their customers before they get carried away with their sound branding.

Free associations of Sound Logos

So I did this free association test with 46 volontery respondents from CBS. The idea is to see if we can see paterns in how sound logos is associated. The result is not ready yet, let me ad quickly.

The test is in three parts:

First the respondent is listening to a sound logo and is asked to write down the associations she/he gets when listening to the sound. The respondent can listen to the sound as many times as necessary. This is repeated with 10 very different sound logos.

Then, the respondent is asked to rate the written associations one by one on a valence scale (positive/negative scale). For each written association, the related sound logo is played.

Lastly, the respondent is asked to categorize the written associations one by on in 8 different meaning categories (e.g. Genre, discription of sound, emotion, memory etc.).

By watching the respondents as they did the test I have made some observatins which I hope is reflected in the test analysis

• Short, simple sound logos produce less amount of associations than longer and more complex sound logos.
• Respondents typically write down three associations. Longer "coding" in the sound will be difficult for companies to get across as a message.
• If respondent cant remember the company behind a sound logo, they often have the business areas correct.
• Unknown sound logos produce just as many associations as known ones. I wonder if the unknown logos can reflect some kind of relation to the business area.

Im looking forward to work with the analysis and see the results. As we dont have any direct hypothesis to test, the analysis will be explorative to see if we can detect any patterns.

Stay tuned :)