Peripheral Processing, Direct Claims

The human, emotional side of relationship building and connection goes beyond even the best computer software.

Scott Elias, founder of New York’s Elias Associates, a firm heavily involved in music partnered commercials, explains,”Classic rock has been effective because it’s nostalgia, something people know and love.” His analysis indicates that about 75 to 80 percent of national television ads now add music to the ads, compared to only 25 percent just a few years ago. Compared to words in the content of an ad, Elias states, “Music is more primal, and is the most effective emotional communicator. You can communicate with smells, words, and pictures, but the most direct and powerful is music and that’s why it’s the universal language.” Making Connections with Music Central and peripheral processing of messages, the focus of much research in consumer behavior, explain how music affects the personality of a brand. When direct claims are made about a product and its attributes-the brand promise-they are processed cognitively by the consumer. Consumers understand what the brand claims to be and evaluate it using their reasoning abilities. Peripheral processing involves cues that the consumer doesn’t usually think about-things such as background music, the color of the ad, feelings toward the actors, and other elements that pass into the brain without thinking about them, passing into the consumer’s memory without the filter of conscious thought. Music is one of the most powerful of the peripheral cues, going directly into the brain, and hopefully resonating in the mind at the time the consumer drives by a store or searches among brands on a shelf. It doesn’t pass through the cognitive filter that evaluates the more direct, or central, messages contained in the ad claims and copy.