As we watched the wellie-wearers revel at Glastonbury and we prepare our picnics for the open air concerts on the long balmy summer evenings, have you ever thought about using music to promote your business brand?

If you think about how important music is in our lives – how it can lift our mood, make us feel melancholic or excite and motivate us, then it’s easy to see how brand-congruent music (music that fits the brand) can have an impact on our customers too. The role of music in advertising is usually meant to capture the attention of the viewer or listener, create a specific mood, suggest quality, and in some cases, to "install" a catchy or annoying jingle in the viewer's head in order for them to remember the product and talk about it with others.

Close your eyes and think of some of today’s major brands and you will no doubt hear an advertising jingle or score of music that accompanies it. Music provides a perfect channel to get in touch with your target customers and create a particular 'branding" to align with the product or service you are offering and the following examples do this well:

• ‘Intel’ - need we say more?
• Coca Cola with ‘Coke is it’
• Guinness with the racing drumbeat music
• And the opera wielding insurance company – Go Compare!
• MacDonald’s – I’m loving it!

Intel Inside used simple catchy notes to represent the quality of the computer chip giant and reflect the digital environment; Coca Cola used "hip" music to target youth in the 80s and 90s; Guinness used the traditional Irish drumbeat music to reflect the heritage and social aspect of the brand and Go Compare and MacDonald’s used a catchy jingle to get the word of mouth going - (who hasn’t found themselves singing one of these in the shower!)

Music today is an extremely powerful way of integrating all of your social media efforts as well. Major brands like Pepsi and Coca Cola have engaged with new audiences by encouraging people to send in recordings of themselves mimicking the sound of opening, pouring and enjoying a bottle of the famous fizzy drink, with the aim of later broadcasting these on TV. YouTube has been used for similar campaigns by big and small companies and Facebook has many fan pages and discussion boards which also encourage engagement with brands through sharing music and advertising jingles.

However, you don’t need to invest heavily in licensing a music piece for your advertising – just simply aligning the type of music that fits your brand – that is brand-congruent - can make all the difference in your business promotion. There are a number of royalty-free music companies and websites featuring music from classical pieces to action drama tunes – all of which can enable you to create a ‘sound’ selling environment…

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