Well at this show I did the other day I started talking about something that I believe in very much: Marketing people are not using the full potential of music (on average).

What do I mean by that?
Think about music, what is music to you? Well to me it is something that makes me feel. It will get me to push a little harder when hitting the slopes on skis or lifting weights in the gym. It will make me feel better if I need encouragement and it might provide relief in grief or in break-ups. In short: music makes me feel. Hearing a song that I love or hate on the radio instantly provokes a reaction. Isn't that what you want to do in you marketing? Find ways to become memorable.

A couple of friends of mine who work with video and graphics astonish me by thinking in pictures. They get a feeling and describe it in a colour, I say a word and they see it as a shape. I on the other hand hear things. I get a feeling and hear a chord, I hear a word and want to play it, we are all wired differently. Marketing has been about the people who see things in colour and shapes. But for me, with the new technology and with the way people are getting increasingly good at sorting out visual impressions sound is a way in. Imagine yourself on the bus or on the subway, someone's phone rings. That ringtone triggers a response, it will make you feel something before you have a chance to filter it because it catches you off guard. Imagine now if that ringtone was also the signature of a company, and that company and ringtone matched in moods and in feeling. The best known example of this is the Saab commercial in Sweden, Oh Laura lent their song Release Me to it, and the match between the song, the commercial and the brand was just magic. It was like watching a movie with a brilliant soundtrack. Every emotion was just captured, you heard the lyric, you felt something. In this case the song turned into a hit, and every time you heard it on the radio or in the club you also thought about the company.

These are not new concepts. But there is however a possibility to use these concepts in a way that is much more aware than most companies are doing. It is not easy to find good partners, most musicmakers are artists (just like most art directors) with the difference that the infrastructure graphical designers have around them to get them to function as a company is not in place yet for musicians. There are however some of us that have a strategic understanding as well as a musical understanding. Some of us who believe in music as something that creates emotion, something people are not able to filter out the way the are with visual content.

Sound is very powerful. It triggers emotion. Companies could leverage in their communication by thinking through their profile on all levels, that includes music.