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Enhancing Web Effectiveness With Audio Sound Design
By Jerry Bader (c) 2008

The average person is exposed to an assault of stimuli each and
every moment of our waking day. Some of this stimulus catches
our attention, but much is filtered out as extraneous, useless,
or unimportant. This filtering is our way of handling the
constant barrage of information we endure. As marketers it is
our job to cut through all the meaningless, random white noise
of life and penetrate the consciousness of our targeted audience
with our marketing messages.

Mere Subliminal Exposure

One of the weapons, tools if you prefer, professional media
producers use to create an impression and influence behavior is
something called mere subliminal exposure, the process of
communication without explicit notice. It is a process and
effect that everyone uses every day without ever thinking about
it, and it is a necessity in order to deal with, and make sense
of, our over-stimulated lives.

The look your spouse gives you at a dinner party, the tone of a
simple comment, or the change in body language communicates a
message that says, 'stop what you're doing before I get
angry,' or 'let's get the heck out of here before I die of
boredom.' But whatever the coded meaning, the communication is
clear. We all have the ability to decode these kinds of minimal
subliminal messages. In fact the inability of some to properly
interpret these kinds of signals has lead to unfortunate
consequences.

This process is not to be confused with the discredited work of
James Vicary, who in 1957 faked the results of subliminal
advertising in movie theaters. He claimed and later recanted
that by flashing barely noticeable images of popcorn and soft
drinks on the screen that it increased sales of the items by a
significant amount. However, this abuse of the phenomenon does
not negate the fact that people are sensitive to, learn from,
and respond to a variety of subtle visual and auditory
experiences that influence their behavior. The same can be said
of other senses like smell and touch, but since our main concern
is how to use this process on website presentations we will
leave the more physical encounters to our offline marketing
colleagues.

Audio Sound Design - The Art of Hidden Persuasion

The Signature Voice-over

One of the least used but most effective and economical
marketing tools a website business has at its disposal is
signature voice-over, or Sonic Personality. It establishes your
identity and embeds your brand by giving your site a human
voice.

It is the sound of the human voice that conveys all the subtlety
and nuance of the message you have to deliver. Major advertisers
use familiar sounding actors and actresses to deliver
personality and impact. Even when an audience doesn't recognize
the voice being used, the positive attributes associated with
that voice are transferred to the product or service being
offered. It is not by random choice that Ford Motor Company
chose Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer sonic personae for the
voice of their television spots or that Chili's restaurants now
employs John Corbett's comfortable, friendly, 'Sex and The
City' voice instead of the previously grating and irritable
sound of comic Wanda Sikes.

Most website businesses cannot afford to hire Hollywood talent
to pitch their products. What is important is that the voice you
choose is a signature voice, a distinctive sound that delivers
the script with character and style employing timber, cadence,
and phrasing like only a professional voice actor can do. Of
course, you must also give your voice talent the right words to
say, which means you provide them with a professionally written
script if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your
signature voice-over.

When we think of voice-overs we usually think of commercial
presentations, but here again most website businesses truly miss
the boat when it comes to utilizing Sonic Personality. We all
know that text on your website is important in order to attract
search engine indexing, unfortunately from a marketing
effectiveness point-of-view, text alone lacks impact.

People are impatient and generally do not want to read volumes
of text information, and besides, most people find it difficult
to read on a computer screen. Even if they do read your
material, how much of it is retained, is it associated with your
company, or does it just get confused with all the other stuff
people see during their busy, business day?

As a solution why not turn all your website copy, including
articles, into audio delivered by a professional signature
voice, providing people the option of reading the text or
sitting back and listening to your words of wisdom?

Of all the multimedia, marketing techniques available to you, a
signature voice is the most economical option whether used as a
stand-alone element or as part of a visual or video
presentation.

Sound Cue Punctuation & Effects

Voice-over is not the only audio method available to the savvy
website marketer. You wouldn't write something without using
punctuation: it's what makes the words meaningful by providing
the cadence necessary for maximizing the impact, but punctuation
does not have to be limited to periods, exclamation marks and
semicolons. Punctuation can be added in the form of sound cues
and audio effects.

Professional audio engineers know what kind of sound to add to a
presentation in order to draw people's attention to certain key
phrases, words, or points. In the same way a composer arranges
the music score for a movie to enhance mood and build
excitement, so too does the commercial audio producer turn a dry
read into an authentic, memorable experience.

Sound punctuation and audio effects should not be taken lightly;
audio sound design, when done properly, is one of the most
complex and technical areas of multimedia, far more
sophisticated than video and just as important if not more so.
Where and how to use trumpet swells, rim shots, and volume
variance is not just art, it's science, and it has a profound
psychological and emotional effect on the listener.

Custom Composed Music

If voice-over is the most under-utilized Web-marketing tool we
have, then music is probably the most abused. No doubt music
like sound design is an enormously powerful method of enhancing
mood, and drawing attention to specific points and images.
Unfortunately slapping on an over-used royalty-free sound loop
that's been used on everything from breakfast cereals to
incontinence products is not the answer.

For music to be effective it should be unique enough to be
associated with your company and arranged in such a way that it
increases the presentation's memorability and enhances its
experience. In the silent movie era music was the only method of
creating this kind of emotional impact, and despite today's
full range of visual presentation techniques and special
effects, music scoring is still one of the most crucial elements
of memorable movie-making.

When it comes to music, you are dealing with the full arsenal of
psychological presentation techniques and failure to use it
properly may be counter-productive.

Signature Sound Logos

One of the first things people do when they start a business is
to have a logo designed. Even novice entrepreneurs recognize
that a company needs some kind of visual identity, a short-form
tag that conveys the brand image that can be recognized in an
instant.

The advent of visual media like television and commercial TV
spots did not obscure the importance of the radio-style jingle
and what has become known as the sound logo or audio signature.
The Maxwell House coffee percolator beat, Kellogs Rice
Krispies' 'Snap, Crackle, Pop,' and Tony The Tiger's
'Grrrrrrrrreat!' are all classic examples of audio signature.
Today we have the familiar sound of Intel's sound logo, the
powerful swell of the THX movie sound tag, and Vonage's
original goofy signature audio branding.

In today's multimedia Web environment, your sound logo is every
bit as important as your visual identity.

It's Theater of the Mind

Radio has often been referred to as 'theater of the mind'
because the combination of voice, sound cues, effects, music,
and audio logos helped paint powerful and memorable mental
images for the listener. For those old enough to remember radio
dramas, the ringing of 'Johnny Dollar's' telephone or the
sound of 'Inner Sanctum's' creaking door are forever
permanently etched in the minds to anyone whoever heard them.

In a Web environment populated by millions of websites all
competing for audience attention, failure to use every marketing
tool at your disposal is simply foolish. If you want to be
heard, it's time to say what you have to say out-loud.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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