Our habit of filtering the barrage of sounds we encounter every day means our relationship with this sensory input is largely unconscious, but it affects us in surprisingly profound ways. Julian Treasure buckets the effects into four groups:
1. Physiological: Calming or stressful sounds affect our hormones, breathing, heart rate and brain waves
2. Psychological: Sounds, most powerfully music, change our emotional states
3. Cognitive: Chaotic soundscapes decrease our mental focus.
4. Behavioral: People move away from unpleasant sounds and toward pleasant sounds.
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How can brands and retailers leverage these effects to create an ideal soundscape?
1. Make sounds congruent
Here’s a shocking statistic. If a sound (music, logo jingle, etc) comes at the viewer from the same direction as the visual communication, impact increases by 1100%. That seems outrageous, but consider the inverse – if the sound and visual are incongruent, impact drops 86% versus silence.
2. Make sounds appropriate
If a customer finds the music in a store to be unpleasant or too loud, their shopping time decreases dramatically. Inappropriate sounds in a retail environment decrease sales by 28%.
3. Make sounds valuable
Give the consumer something with the sound – a positive physiological or psychological benefit. Don’t just bombard the consumer with accidental noise.
*Interesting note: Treasure recommends listening to 5 minutes of birdsong a day. From our days as jungle-roamers, we subconsciously feel that when birds are singing we are safe. Listening to the sound of birdsong evokes powerful feelings of contentment and well-being.
Video via TED
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