Music as Engagement

Abstract

IN OUR EARLIER CHAPTER DOCUMENTING the history of music branding, we touched on the physical location of retail, restaurant and hospitality brands and referenced the work I have done in the space. In this chapter, we are going to dive deep into this area and discuss the fundamentals of how brands can use music to really engage with their audience. It doesn’t take a mountain of research to know that music, like all emotive art forms, engages and touches its audience. Music has a unique power to captivate people on an emotional and psychological level – we all have a song from our childhood that invokes nostalgia and fills our eyes with tears of memory. I can’t predict what would affect you personally, but I guarantee that there is one song that if you heard it right now, it would transport you somewhere else. Maybe your first kiss? Your wedding dance? The day your child was born? And though we all know this instinctively, it does help to look at research which underscores our anecdotal point-of-view.