PH Audio features in this week’s Print Week Magazine. Christian Peacock, sales and marketing director at Blackburns of Bolton, tells Print Week’s Deputy Features Editor Philip Chadwick about how OHM is an important marketing tool for the print industry.
Too often, choosing royalty-free music to play on hold means choosing the track that’s least annoying.
Our business is based on the idea it shouldn’t have to be like that.
But if you make a conscious decision to improve the way your brand sounds, you’re starting to think about strategy. After all, you’re now shaping the way clients hear you – creating associations that connect sounds to images.
So, whether you’re making the most of an audio branding service like ours, or simply paying for a licensed track you think works well with – and best represents – your brand, it makes sense to think about what kind of audio fits with people’s image of your company.
Get this wrong, and you could end up sending mixed messages. 
You’ve heard it all before:
We need blue-sky thinking. I’m talking about pushing the envelope, going forward, let’s touch base soon.
Translation: corporate waffle that, in reality, could be said in half the words. Just another way to say, “We need big ideas, so give me a call”.
Anyone who watched Heston Blumenthal’s attempt to resurrect Little Chef last year will no doubt remember the chief executive’s constant wittering about ‘blue-sky thinking’. The phrase alone is irritating, but when used in the context of menus and motorway services, it simply became absurd. You can watch the evidence here.
Finished cringeing?
Well, in this post, we’re looking at why these kind of phrases have no place in external communications.
The New Year is a time for change, a time when we revaluate who we are and what we do. But wait — before you think, ‘Here we go, more spiel about how we should go on a diet or give up smoking’, we’re actually talking about how making small changes to the way you approach marketing could really help your business flourish in 2010.
We’re a patient bunch, us Brits. Along with fax machines, umbrellas and radar, we invented queuing.
We queue at Alton Towers. Queue at the post office. Queue for pints. Queue for burgers after too many pints. We’d queue for sleeping if somebody said it was the right and proper thing to do.
Waiting politely is a nationwide sport. To the rest of the world, we’re a country of hooligans, stag-doers, beer-drinkers and queue-ers. To rest of the world, we’re either battering each other, voicing baddies in Bond films, or standing quietly in a line.
But, according to new research by TalkTalk, there’s a problem with that stereotype.
As a country, we’re fast losing patience.
In today’s business world, many companies use music on hold productions to engage their customers while they’re waiting on hold, using professional voiceovers and music to portray a strong, professional image.
But how do you go about keeping your customers engaged when they’re not on hold?
In an ideal world we’d all have the singing voice of Leona Lewis and the humour of Peter Kay to keep customers interested and involved in the phone conversation. But sadly, this just isn’t the case — so we need to find other ways to inspire confidence in our business!
In the same way we now watch Blu-ray over Betamax, and listen to MP3s instead of cassettes, the technology for on-hold messaging has advanced greatly in the last ten years.
At PH Audio we’ve used a number of methods to deliver music on hold, and our use of audio technology is something we’re always looking to improve and develop. So, from CD players that jumped and warped, to digital playback with a lot of flexibility, in this post you’ll find our own rough audio technology timeline.
PH Audio are (queue shameless plug) the on-hold marketing champions throughout Europe, so it goes without saying that we know what we’re doing when it comes to all things on hold.
That said, we do like our clients to be on the ball when choosing music and voiceovers that really represent their brands. And although our Audio Account Managers will make expert recommendations – nobody knows their business as well as the clients themselves.
It’s powerful, emotive and often controversial – music has a strange effect on us humans. Music on hold is unique in that it finds people when they’re not expecting it and can transport them (emotionally speaking) to another place.
The on hold music tracks below are the most popular choices among PH Audio clients in 2009.
They’re not listed in a particular order, because we want to know what you think – which is your favourite?
Tea for Two
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Ebb & Flow
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Cold as Ice
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Ocean Sunrise
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Rule the World
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Vote for your favourite track below right now and why not post a comment to tell us why you think it is the best track. If you feel that your on hold messaging could do with a fresh sound - contact PH Audio today!
Loading ...At PH Audio, we’re pleased to welcome scores of new clients to our service every day, three key companies who have recently joined us include: Ladbrokes, Village Hotels and Korg Musical Instruments.