Advertising majors listen up! Could the placement of the music in advertisements affect sale rates? Could something as simple as playing the music in an ad slightly before the video really predict a viewer’s memory of the product? Recent research conducted by Andy Rogers from the University of Huddersfield shows this exact trend occurring. According to Rogers, when music in an advertisement was played just slightly before the video was played, viewers showed high responses of memory retention (Parker).

In a specific study that Rogers conducted, two commercials were shown to a group of people. The two different commercials that were played for the participants were a soft drink commercial and an advertisement for mineral water, and each commercial had two different versions. The first version of these commercials were the normal screenings of the commercials, but the second version was manipulated. The researchers manipulated the experiment so that they changed the music and video alignment in the second version of these commercials.

What they stunningly found was that people tended to remember more of the information in the commercial when the music was played slightly earlier than the visual imagery was shown. Even just playing the advertisement with a soundtrack a tenth of a second before the visual stimulus accounts for higher recollection of the ad (Parker). However, how can it be that people remember more when music is played before the visual aspects when one would think that the commercial would flow better when everything is in sync?

The reason for this supreme recollection is because when the music is played slightly before the video, the brain tries to anticipate what it going to occur next (Parker). However with all of this research how sure can we be with these conclusions? This study fails to account for other compounding variables that make recollection easier such as some material in commercials may have simpler information that others. In addition, the study fails to mention if this was a blind study. If it were not conducted as a blind study, then the participants might try harder on remembering the information in the commercial with the misplaced music because they knew that’s what the researchers were looking for.

Parker, Will. “Mis-synced Music Proves to Be a Powerful Enhancement for TV Ads.” Sci Gogo. McMurdo

Media Pty Ltd, 17 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014. <http://scienceagogo.com/news/

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