It is amazing to think about the sounds we hear throughout the day yet hardly ever pay attention to. The sprinkle of the shower in the morning, the scraping of the butter knife against the toast, the pings in the elevator, or even the ticking of the clock _ these seemingly insignificant noises actually affect our perception of our surroundings, say experts.
"In a multimedia environment, the audio section of that is more likely to be perceived below conscious level," notes Tony Hertz, radio guru and founder of Hertz:Radio, a creative/production company. "People are less aware of it, but it doesn't make it any less important, because it is still there. It's not the sound itself, but how it makes you feel."
Sound extends beyond the literal meaning of the words, he said, and the emotions evoked through pausing, pitch and rhythm are often universal. Regardless of how different cultures are, there are certain things that don't change _ the only thing that changes is the expression of them.
Hertz said that his intention is to tap into universal emotions and use local expertise to find the best way of expressing it.
Calling himself an "ear person", he has always been fascinated by sound, particularly since he grew up listening to the radio. His own voice is also quite a trademark _ it's smooth, deep and rich and radiates calmness, knowledge and confidence.
Over the past 40 years, he has travelled to 36 countries to give lectures on the subject and conduct workshops to tell people how important it is to make use of the voice, not only as an instrument, but as a way of bringing people closer to each other.
"Hearing is the first sense that develops in a human being. A foetus can hear at 12 weeks in the womb, before it can see, smell or touch. The bond between the mother and the child develops first through hearing."
Sound, in this highly visual world that we live in, usually goes unnoticed. Everything that we see has been designed and thought about, but the sound that we hear is mostly accidental, or not as carefully considered as it could be.
Hertz gave an example of coffee shops _ most of them either put on a CD that happens to be lying around, tune in to a radio station, or play whatever the manager likes. "If you ask people why the coffee cup looks like that, they can answer because the cups have been designed to communicate something. But if you ask why they play the music like that, usually they can't answer."
Choosing the environmental sound is more than just filling the silence, he said. Hertz cited the findings of a company in the UK he's associated with that specialises in environmental sound. The company, he said, provided the soundscape for an airport in the UK, since airports are very stressful places. The soundscape provided was a mixture of generated music and bird sounds to calm people on the go.
"They played that sound on alternating days. On the days that they played the sound, sales in the duty free shop went up 10%. There had been experiments in restaurants where they played different kinds of music, and the kind of music played affected how much money people spent. Simply, if it's the right music, people will stay longer, and if they stay longer, they spend more money. It's really simple as that," said Hertz.
Hertz, the only winner of both Black and Yellow D&AD Radio Pencils, a highly respected award in the world of design and advertising, said audio is an integral but under-used part of branding. Hertz gave an example of a small exercise he did in the Philippines for a presentation. He recorded the interactive voice response messages of the Philippines' six biggest banks and edited them together. The result was quite surprising.
"They sounded like one bank. They all have the same kind of accent, the same rhythm, and they are saying the same thing. If you say to those banks that their logo looks exactly like another bank's, they'd be horrified. They seem to be content with sharing the same audio although, quite often, the first contact they have with people is on the phone," Hertz said.
He raised another example of how sometimes companies overlook how they sound to people. Going to the office, the receptionist greets the visitor, and the voice of the receptionist is someone's experience of that brand. "Companies would dress their receptionists in a uniform, but do they think about how they sound and what they say?"
There are a number of audio touch points, according to Hertz, ranging from the sound of advertising, telephone response and the website, to the sound of the product itself. However, in his experience, the one industry that pays huge attention to how the product sounds is the car industry. Research and experimentation are carried out to find the right sounds, down to the closing of the doors. Although the sound is not directly related to the intrinsic qualities of the vehicle, it is an important factor for customers when evaluating the car.
"More than 50% of the people interviewed said the sound of the door closing makes a difference to whether they buy that car or not. If the door doesn't feel solid enough, they won't go any further [with testing it]," Hertz said.
However, sounding right is not sounding like you are trying too hard; that comes off as unnatural. Over the past four decades of his work, he's found that when people do radio commercials, they tend to fall into the trap of using a set type of voice. A lot of commercials are too fast because they try to pack as much information as possible into the limited timeframe.
"Radio engages by allowing the listener to experience some sort of emotion and to create an image in his or her mind," he explains. "The faster you go, the less time the listener has to engage with the emotion. Emotions are not fast. Pause longer so that you sound like a human being, like you're taking the time to think about what you're saying next. Real people don't talk like it's scripted."
At present, audio branding is emerging in the West, and while a survey revealed that only 5% of the 1,000 biggest companies on the Forbes list use integrated sound in their website, that is about to change, he said. Companies are becoming more aware of the importance of audio branding, and the industry is becoming established. "The most common error is to not really think about the possibilities," Hertz said.
