The emotional power of music

As a Creative Director, I am always looking for ways to grab people’s attention for client's and create ideas that give people an emotional reward. So, when it came to the last years spring campaign for Homebase, featuring 'Gary the tortoise' galloping into a wide-open garden, we knew music would play a massive role. Making the spot more distinctive and more memorable for the audience.

This is a technique that we have seen brands use really well in recent years. Take John Lewis for example, who are well known for their sentimental songs at Christmas.

Or Sony, which featured millions of coloured balls synchronised to the music of Jose Gonzalez. These spots would have been far less engaging, far less attention grabbing with a lesser track.

Or even the latest campaign from New Commercial Arts for Halifax featuring Oasis, that puts the brand back at the heartland of Britain.

That’s because music has the power to make us laugh or cry, and bring back memories, reminding of us of a different place and time in our lives.

In fact, studies have shown that we use the same parts of our brain to process emotion and trigger memory.

A recent study by Neuro-Insight and Thinkbox also found that all forms of music performed well in terms of memory encoding response, but the golden oldies performed best!  

With ads featuring music before 2000 achieving an 8% higher response than more recent chart hits.

So, when we started searching for a music track for Homebase, we knew we wanted something that would evoke a strong emotion. Remind us of the ultimate freedom we have in our own homes, the freedom to be ourselves. And that track was the Ivor Nevello winning track Black Beauty by Denis King.

For our core audience we knew this would instantly transport them back to a time and place where they had the freedom to be themselves and run free.

We also knew that Black Beauty would provide us with the perfect soundtrack to show the action unfolding on screen. Allowing us to animate Gary in slow motion to every beat of the original score. Using the cadence of the track to build emotion and memorability.

It’s hard to imagine the spot with any other track, but I'll let you be the judge.