Anyone who has worked in marketing is likely to tell you that it’s an industry that is constantly changing and evolving. Even now, this article (essentially marketing content for our studios) was written from home as South Africans are facing another week of being locked down during the Coronavirus pandemic – another change which the marketing world will find quite easy to adapt to because of the fluid landscape of the business.

As businesses grow and expand, there are more and more challenges which need to be faced, and one of these is how to market efficiently and cost-effectively. How to optimally get out into the world and make sure your brand is seen and heard.

This is becoming even more important as the technology which surrounds our daily lives increases and evolves too. It can sometimes seem like a real mission to keep up. However, even with all these changes and advancements, there are still a few aspects within marketing that will always be prominent. One of these aspects is Content Creation. Being a sound and production studio, we deal with many advertising agencies and marketing personal who are constantly using our services to create content, whether it’s for radio, TV or social media. Recording studios play an important part in the whole content creation process, especially when most content needs Music and Voice Overs.

We want to highlight some ways in which music and voice over recording can be used to help you market yourself in a digitally rich world.

Where Music is concerned –

Many articles have been written about how music affects the brain and what it can do to people’s emotional states. This is part and parcel of what makes it so important for a company to consider, when looking into an ad campaign or a new signature sound.

In an article written a few years back by Colin Shaw of Entrepreneur SA, “The language your brain associates with music creates emotions. This language is why you turn up the volume when you hear a song from your youth and sing along joyfully, particularly when you haven’t heard it in a long time.”

The same can be said for any music from great ads that we may remember from TV or radio . These are jingles or tunes which we remember fondly, and this is what the aim of using music for your marketing campaigns should be.

Another great example of sound in adverts is the Allan Gray brand. The way in which they use music in their adverts creates emotive and moving  scenes along with the visuals, this is something that gets remembered, not because an audience member saw something  but because they experienced something unspoken. This is why music is a universal language. The moment an audience member goes beyond just seeing an ad and feels something, then you’ve gone further than just presenting them with something, and you’ve connected them with an emotion.

Another thing that this brand does well? Voice-overs!

Think about every voice-over you’ve ever heard, and then realise, every time you send a Whatsapp voice note, you’re sending a voice-over. Voiceover is increasingly one of the most used forms of communication across the marketing sphere, and as a company you need to know how to use it to your advantage.

Voice-overs can be used in a variety of ways for TV, Radio or internet based ads. Whether you are looking to act on a hard sell style technique where you punt a product in a Verimark style TV ad, or a relaxed conversational ad where you can connect with your audience. It is the human connecting tool by which a listener begins to understand what it is you are trying to sell.

There is almost no advert at this stage which doesn’t use voice in one way or another, if you go looking for ads which have done incredibly well, most searches will confirm this. For the rest, the integral part of what makes the advert will either be the visuals or the music. One can divide modern adverts into 4 pillars; product, human connection (The voice or the actor), emotional connection (The music) and visuals. The reason visuals are the 4th pillar is because they are not always needed, for example a radio ad.

Now think about the possibility of mixing an art form which makes people connect with their emotion, and then touch on what it is you’re wanting people to experience, and you end up with a winning combination.

Every time you listen to an advert or see something on TV or online where a voice is concerned, take a second to listen for the music behind it. Most of the time, you’re very likely to hear something, and it will almost always play into the emotion of what the ad is trying to portray, whether that be a tropical island setting or a super relaxed theme.

The most important thing to remember when starting to look into how music and Voice-overs can play a part in your marketing, is the audience. The trick in using it to your advantage, is knowing what your audience needs.

It’s important to be able to use a particular style of voice-over or music to push an idea without making people believe they are being marketed to. That’s the true magic of voiceover and music as a combination.

Once you’ve created a marketing strategy, you will know where your audience spends their time online or offline, you will have a basic idea of their demographics such as age, gender and what their median incomes are. This will enable you to tailor your message to that particular group of people and allow you to market more effectively.

At Cosher Recording Studios, we have a database of affordable Voice Over artists who are able to suit the needs of any advert. We also have producers and composers who are experienced in music from ads to full composition scores. Thus, we can provide you with a full service when it comes to getting the perfect sound for your ad.