Below is a recent Muziko article which was featured on the Irish Voice Over website blog, Piehole.ie.
Choosing the right music for you commercial can be a difficult task, but here Muziko director, Alan, discusses choosing the right Music for your advertising campaign, some tips and hints on how to do so, and how music can really make a difference in helping to connect with your audience.
Back in the early 90s many commercials were simply a still image which conveyed a simple message of a new product or service which TV viewers ought to try. But how times have changed! Our TV commercials today are often epic productions with huge budgets. They are not simply a notice to an audience that a new product is being launched and that this new brand should be tried out. They are more like a short film shot in an exotic location pimped with all the lavish production bells and whistles that the latest video technology has to offer. Advertisers must tell a story or create a theme which gives the audience something entertaining, inspiring or funny. And something that ultimately sells the product by giving this value to the consumer first, or creating some kind of emotional connection with them.
But with so much emphasis on the visual aspect of a commercial the music can often be overlooked. Some see the music as an after thought, an added task to wrap up as quickly as possible in the edit suite. On the other hand others choose a well recognized but costly commercial track that just does not have the right connection with the visuals. This is money wasted and connection not made.
So a little thinking about what will help to carry the visuals in theme and emotion is certainly time well spent. Below are some hints and tips to guide music selectors through the range of music options:
Budget
Unbeknown to many commercials producers most people in advertising attribute 50% of the experience of an ad to the sound element(Kelly/Simmons). Ok, no one is suggesting spending 50% of the budget on sound or music but do assign a decent amount to it. There are still some who will choose Chopin or another classical composers music merely because it is now public domain works and so they do not have to pay licensing fees - even if the music is in no way relevant to the visuals. But thankfully most of us are beyond that now!
Some Budget, Not High Budget
It is essential to choose a track that helps to build the feeling or emotion that the visuals are attempting to create. And it does not have to be a well known commercial track either. The quality of music in online production libraries has jumped massively in recent times. Even to the point where audiences are trying to find out who the artist is from a certain commercial in order to buy their albums. An example is Blackbird Song by Ben Cocks, featured in a recent Canon commercial(Source:Soundlounge). This proves that consulting a music library or music supervisor can unearth previously unknown musical treasures when looking to find something different. And, the licensing won't cost the earth.
Ben Cocks' track was sourced from a production music library - click here to view the Honda commercial
Get It Composed
If your commercial is punctuated by certain events, then perhaps you can hire a composer to write a score as such which helps this along. Whether they are given a brief or not, composers will take a fresh approach to the visuals and can arrive with that something which no one else had thought of before.
Dig, Experiment, Take a Chance
So the music and visuals must relate - yes, but maybe not so obviously. Try something different, something that stimulates your audience, makes them think unconsciously - 'that works, but I am not sure why!' This is easier said than done but with some digging and the will to do something different, you should get there. And, in a way, your audience will thank you for it.
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