Pairing the right sound with the right brand can reap rewards for marketers — but today’s savvy consumers will also pick up mismatches instantly.

Source: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the right sound at the right moment might be worth a thousand pictures.”

Consumers will interact with screens less and less as technology becomes more advanced and sound will become even more paramount as a signal to the brain.

Companies can use music and sound to develop their relationships with customers. “Apple proved that if you love a company, you will do business with them,” Beckerman said. “A very, very valuable commodity is your brand— not just for its own sake, but in terms of how it helps you monetize customer relationships.That’s one of the things that sound does, probably more powerfully than anything else, just because it acts on this really primal part of your brain. It gives you these emotional reactions and emotional connections in a matter of just a second.”

Even when the audience claims to be sick and tired of a hearing a ubiquitous song, the music still works. “The reality is if [the songs] trigger pleasurable feelings, pleasurable memories for you, you actually really love them,” Beckerman said.

In recent years, companies have capitalized on this notion by using pop and rock songs in their advertising. But the strategy doesn’t always work. One notable backfire happened with Royal Caribbean Cruises, which used the 1977 Iggy Pop tune, “Lust For Life,” in several television ads in 2005. The song, which is listed among Rolling Stone‘s “Greatest Songs of All Time,” is about drug abuse and prostitution. Viewers called out the company for its choice and the song was quickly yanked.

An important component of that is also knowing when to employ silence, since “The problem isn’t that there’s not enough sound. The problem is we are actually overrun by sound,”