PH Audio Blog

Companies spend a lot on symbols. On symbols that people associate with their name.

It’s kind of reductive, but in the simplest terms, advertising is about making an effective symbol that carries a full brand message. That’s why the Nike ‘Swoosh’ logo equals athletics. Equals running. Equals gold medals. Equals you running faster.

Advertising is about making a large concept into a picture. Reducing sentences and paragraphs into lines and squiggles.

It’s been about that for hundreds of years. About graphic identities carrying brands.

Now, of course, we’re producing much more than logos. We’ve got the internet, for one – we’ve got the viral videos and the microsites; the discussions across social media and becoming a company’s fan on Facebook. Now, businesses are creating fully branded ‘user experiences’.

But in the last century, we also got ways to produce better sounds, and faster. We have studios and microphones. And as this medium has grown and gone digital, so too have the agencies (we’re one!) who specialise almost exclusively in audio branding – not graphic-based branding. And on commercial radio, telly, the internet, businesses are using these agencies to compete for the most memorable sound.

With these developments – these new ways to reach an audience – there’s been a scramble. A scramble to see what business should sound like. A sound to define a brand.

Critical Noise – an excellent blog of essays on every aspect of sound – calls this scramble a ‘skirmish to package every experience with sound, from corporate messaging to personal ringtones.’

You’ll recognise some of these packages. There’s the Intel sonic logo, the Asda jingle, even the Coca-Cola adverts that herald the start of Christmas holidays.

But like anything that works, and seems to work well, the whole world has a go at it. That’s why for every plinky-plonky Nokia ringtone, there’s a Crazy Frog.

There’s a danger of information overload. Of too much noise, and not enough signal. You could even call it corporate noise pollution.

And now, just as Critical Noise goes on to point out, when you throw sound into the advertising mix, you’ve got to be wary of deafening your audience.

That’s why knowing when to be quiet, and knowing when to speak up, is critical.

On-hold – the right time to speak up

We all know being on hold isn’t ideal. In its worst format – silence or beeps – it exploits the kind of patience that few people have. The kind of patience that many are paying national rates for.

When people are on hold, or waiting to be transferred, they’re not really choosing to be. And that’s why your business can’t afford to make things worse.

It’s not the time for bad music, nor the time for meaningless platitudes about calls being important.

But it is an opportunity to deliver a message. To entertain and inform. It’s a chance to talk about something that’s relevant to your callers. It’s a chance to prove you really understand them. And by understanding exactly why people call your business, you’ll develop messaging on hold that caters to them. Their tastes. Their needs. Their reason for choosing your business over a competitor’s.

At PH Audio, we bang on a lot about the amount it costs to get a caller in the first place. Because if marketing is the distillation process, then this call is the fancy cocktail. That’s why you can’t go and mess it up.

On the phone, your business sounds like the call operator. Your brand sounds exactly like the silence or the beeps you’ve got on hold. There aren’t logos or videos or fancy slogans here – so if you’re going to play music on hold with on-hold messaging, you’ve got to do it properly if you want your brand to hold up.

In this case, signal is a lot more important than noise. Because, if silence says more elsewhere – elsewhere in this market of many, many noises and messages – on hold it says nothing.

Or, it says you don’t care.

Done right, on-hold messaging is a unique opportunity for a business. It doesn’t have to be another pile of noises to tune out from.

So how do you want your business to sound?