How Marketers Use Music for Mind Control

Your are constantly being bombarded with sneaky marketing campaigns. Billions of dollars are poured into convincing you to spend more of your hard earned dollars. Did you know that they are using music to change your shopping habits too? This isn't a new trick. Since the 60s, companies have been strategically using music to influence your way of thinking about a product. They have also been using music to alter HOW you shop in their stores. Though this may sound like a big department store conspiracy theory with a dash of hypnotism.. it's not. It's actually pretty simple. Take this example from the auto industry. Professional DJ, Josh Gabriel, told me about the manipulative use of music in the auto industry. He told me that car companies target their music towards their proposed customer. With someone in their twenties they’ll use a song that topped the charts when they were in high school. It’s the surest way to tug at their collective heartstrings. “The memories that are strongest are locked in with emotion and you have the most of those between 18 and 24 years old,” Gabriel told me. “So most deep associations with songs are from that period of your life.” Who knew Skeletor and Stretch Armstrong could sell cars? Honda. That’s who. Via thehustle.co It doesn't stop there. Once you're in the store, you will often meet the second wave audio attack. Have you ever walked past a store and taken a peak inside because of the awesome music they were playing? Stores will play their target demographic's favourite jams to entice shoppers into their stores. This explains why Abercrombie & Fitch pumps house music at absurd volumes for tweens and teens, and why the Nordstrom in my hometown had a live pianist play a grand piano by the main escalator. Via thehustle.co Music can make you shop faster In the mid 60s, researches discovered that the volume of music in a grocery store impacts the speed of shopping. Louder music did not impact what the shoppers put in their carts, but they did it a whole lot faster. Pumping customers in and out of grocery stores efficiently adds up in the long run financially! All thanks to a few notches up on the volume knob! The speed of the song also has an impact. Slower songs = Slower shoppers. Faster songs = Faster shoppers. Music tempo also counts. Slow-tempo tunes make people move slower, whether they’re shopping in a store or eating dinner. What’s a slow tempo song? It’s a song that, were you to clap, would feel make you feel like you were moving in slo-mo.   The style of music matters too In the early 90s, a study showed that playing classical music in a wine shop led to people buying more wine. Next time you walk through the LCBO, open your ears and have a listen. Pay attention to what kind of classical music they're playing too! The study showed that the origin of the music had an [...]

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