Marketing and Innovation Through Sound; COVID-19 and Beyond

The coronavirus has done a lot of heavy hitting lately. It increased our anxiety for the future of our businesses and the economy of the world. What will our bottom line be when all of this blows over? How much should we spend on advertising and marketing for our brands during this time of financial uncertainty? How do we keep our sales numbers up when people aren’t spending?  

Whenever we go back to normal, it will be a new normal. 

The Past In Marketing

In the past, marketers have relied heavily on data. They’ve drawn up their statistics on typical spends and routines of “white male age 34” or “hispanic female age 56”. They market to these well thought out well researched demographics of people that buy their goods and request their services.

However, our tried and true buyer and consumer information has been altered. What once was a spend, is now a window shop. What once was a daily routine is now completely altered. What once was a buyer persona is now a buyer persona plus family.

The New Normal

As of March 20th, California became the first state to officially be on lockdown. However, in Los Angeles County, the closures started about a week before. People who generally had an hour and a half to two hour one way commute from the Inland Empire to Santa Monica (seriously you guys), are now at home. Massive conferences and festivals like NAB and SXSW were cancelled. Students who used to frequent dorm hallways and late night parties are….not. Shopping malls are empty. Restaurants are closed.

Suddenly, everyone’s at home. With their family. Or by themselves. Normal routines have stopped. Busy day to day life has slowed to a crawl. We won’t be shopping like we used to. We won’t be socializing like we used to. We won’t be washing our hands like we used to.  

I believe the average person is closing up their wallet till they know more about tomorrow and what it will look like. Even with the stimulus checks and the small business loans that the government has set up, it’s going to be rough.  

Now is not the time to “sell” to anyone (unless you have toilet paper). Now is the time to comfort and entertain. Now is the time to sit with our patrons and consumers and say, “yes, I am with you. I relate to you.”  

This is the time to innovate marketing strategy, develop a new creative that has not been explored, and get to know consumers in a brand new way.

So how can we market to someone without ending with a sales pitch; without being intrusive or offensive? How can we really truly connect with our audience when ultimately we are a business and need to sell our goods and services? Who is our new audience anyway?

The personas that we once relied on for our data have changed. Now it’s not just John Smith age 34. It’s John Smith age 34 and Joan Smith age 33 along with Sally Smith age 7 and Bobby Smith age 4. They are all there in a confined space and they are all paying attention.  

They are all listening. This is our opportunity to respond mindfully and artistically.

The Reality

We know that the ad we wrote and shot in February about the amazing luxurious experience you’ll have driving a brand new Audi is no longer relevant. Marketing budgets have shrunk. Production has halted. Access to high end gear and the capability to do a full blown video campaign shoot are non-existent.

Hollywood has shut down.  

So what can we do when our audience has changed and our access to high end gear and production facilities have been limited?  

We relate. We adapt. Marketing should too.

So how do we become a member of this new community? How do we create trust and acceptance in our customer’s households (no longer a single persona)? They’re looking for understanding and sincerity. They’re looking for comfort and entertainment rather than something to buy (unless it’s toilet paper).  

How do we hold to our tried and true but also innovate and become relevant to the present day?  

What is new but has had a proven track record of engagement, and authenticity for over 100 years? Sound.

Radio; Now and Then

Radio has been king since it went commercial in 1900. In the past decade or so, it has dropped off in listenership only to be reinvented and rebooted. Same medium; different formats. The concept of auditory storytelling still holds relevance.  

It used to be our main source of communication about the matters of our world and community. It used to be our main source of entertainment.

If you haven’t checked out any old “radioland” radio shows please do yourself a favor and do it right after you read this article!  

Here’s a few great resources.  https://www.otr.net/ https://www.oldradioworld.com/

From 1900-1922, the radio networks were scrambling to find a way to monetize their programming (sound familiar…hint hint YouTube?). It wasn’t until Bell Telephone Company, a parent company of AT&T, produced the first radio advertisement in 1922 that they figured it out.  https://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160265990/first-radio-commercial-hit-airwaves-90-years-ago.  

Flash forward 100 years and we’ve seen this pattern of searching for monetization options repeat itself. First radio, then TV, then internet and streaming networks, and now voice first technology.

Voice First

The beauty and power of voice first technology is that it takes on the primary principle of radio. Transmitting messages through sound. For those of you not used to the term, voice first technology is utilized through interfaces like smart speakers, voice assistance in cars and homes, wearables, hearables, etc. 

I feel that one of the reasons that these new interfaces haven’t been fully adopted or realized is that marketers think that it’s a replacement to video and other visual devices. They don’t want to take the chance on something replacing phones or computers. They don’t see sound marketing as a realistic replacement. Guess what? Neither do I.  

Voice technology is not a replacement of visual modality, it is an enhancement to it.

Phones are not going anywhere. They are way too functional to go the way of Laserdisc. They serve too many functions for anyone to realistically believe that anything will be invented to make them obsolete.  

Sound in marketing creates an opportunity for a multimodal experience that we’ve never seen before. With voice and sound we have a unique opportunity to create an enhancement to that which we already have established in our brand. We get to add to our sensory perception of our brand and incorporate both sight and sound.

The freedom that we have through voice and sound in marketing is that we can set up the consumer as the author of the story. They choose the function and, through cleverly crafted coding and design, they are led down a path of events of their choosing. Those events could be purely task driven. However, they could also be cleverly fashioned into entertainment.

How To Implement Sound Into Your Marketing

For example, think of that podcast you just found that talks about the exciting world of entrepreneurship. It tells the real life stories of business owners that we know or don’t know and encourages us to explore our possibilities outside of our normal day to day.  

Or how about that Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action that you stumbled upon that teaches how to do a 10 minute meditation before breakfast to set our mind for the day.  

What about the narrative radio show about a scientist who travels to Mars and discovers a colony of Martians that have been studying human beings for years by watching repeats of Seinfeld they picked up on their long range frequencies? 

How about an app that changes the sound of your voice into a favorite Looney Tunes character to leave silly and probably nonsensical messages for bored friends a few states away.

Where's The Money?

So why is this relevant? Why even spend the time exploring these sorts of options? Where’s the money?

Who created the entrepreneur podcast? Maybe an entrepreneur who coaches other entrepreneur’s to be their best. If the listener is engaged and “sold”, they’ll call up that coach and ask for a trial lesson. 

Who created the meditation skill? Maybe a yoga studio that wants to remain relevant and within one’s memory so that once our social distancing time is up, they’ll still have business.

Who told the Martian story? Maybe it was a network that had a script but couldn’t produce it as a TV show because of the quarantine so they worked it into a radio show to get their content out in a timely (less costly) way. 

Who made the app? A brilliant company that markets to people with a lot more free time on their hands. Once they hook them on that app, they could maybe introduce them to their more business minded apps when business starts back up again. Or they are purely ridiculous content and enough said. 

All of these examples could fit easily into a sales funnel; attention, interest, desire, and action.

The Fine Print

Look closely at what is out there in the sound space and you’ll see that there is more to it than meets the ear. Yes, they created content for engagement, entertainment, and relatability but they also were able to invite their brand into your living room.  

You’re enjoying yourselves. You’re engaged. And if that brand is doing their job correctly, you’re remembering who brought you those happy moments. And you’ll call on them again.  

Challenging Times Call For Innovational Measures

This is how I believe we should be marketing to our consumers; now and after COVID-19 is a distant memory. We have an opportunity like NEVER before to have a truly captive audience. So how do we captivate them further? How do we turn them into our brand champion?

In this time of forced creativity, let’s take full advantage. Now is the time to implement those things that we had our finger on the button but hadn’t actually hit play yet. Now is the time to learn and grow within new parameters and circumstances; create new experiences for ourselves and our consumers and patrons. We already know that pretty much all of us will lose revenue during this inevitable recession.  

So why not experiment and take a chance at being a part of the next creative approach?

Here’s a great quote from Anastasia Shcherbakova in her article “While in the regular times innovating is optional, during a crisis the necessity of evolving is crucial, urgent and vital.”

Let’s create this world of sound that has not yet been fully realized together. Create something…anything. Experiment, innovate, and challenge yourselves. Have a heart and be there for your audience. Captivate them with what you can do but don’t “sell at them”. Let them know that YOU know that now’s not the time.  

Now is the time to get on board with voice and sound in marketing.