Picture of a digital audio workstation session for an animated commercial.
To begin with, let’s establish the three main aspects of sound that go into making an advertisement/commercial successful.
Voice Over
Engaging Music
Immersive Sound Effects
Today’s content creators and producers have definitely nailed the first two aspects of sound, but unfortunately, the potential of sound effects in modern content hasn’t been uncovered yet. In this article, we’re going to discuss the various advantages of integrating sound effects into your advertising content, and how nuke sound can efficiently help with streamlining that process.
Firstly, we must establish that sound effects in fact do make advertising content engaging. But you’re probably wondering, how? Think of it this way, when your audience comes across your visual marketing content, what are the various things that stick out to them? What are the multiple aspects of production that convince their brain into watching what you’ve produced? Visually, it is the different colors within the video, it is the dynamic text motion graphics that engage your audience’s mind into watching the video in the first place, it is the fact that they may see a familiar face, or see the logo of a familiar brand, that puts the audience into the space of willing to give this piece of content a chance.
But what else is it about a piece of creative content that keeps its audience engaged? For a quick second, let’s zoom out, back up, and talk about the relation between sound and moving images.
Until the invention of the Vitaphone in 1926, the world had only been exposed to silent films. The world only knew about moving images as moving images, without the concept of having synchronized dialogues, music and sound effects. All of that changed when Warner Brothers, a small studio at the time, released the first feature length film (The Jazz Singer), that includes all three, music, sound effects and dialog. That was the first revolution in the world of sound and moving images, after which, there was no going back.
Think about it, how many silent films have you watched? Would you be interested in watching a silent version of the Avengers? The answer is no, nobody in the 21st century would voluntarily watch a silent version of any modern day film. Why is that? That is due to the evolution of our minds, when we watch a film without sound, we feel like 50% of the film is missing. You can watch content with subtitles, but does it feel the same? Nope. And again, why is that? It is due to the fact that your brain identifies that the picture you’re watching isn’t immersive. Why is it not immersive? Because it’s missing synchronized sound, your ears aren’t able to relate to what your eyes are consuming. Which very conveniently reduces the consumer’s attention, leading towards a much shorter attention span.
Thus, think about adding sound to your content as adding another dimension to stimulate your consumer’s mind, which will always subconsciously lead them to being more immersed and engaged in your content, which then organically leads towards an elongated attention span.
Now is a good time to actually dive into what sound effects are? How does it differ from music? To explain the difference, I’d love for you to commit 20 seconds of your time to watching this video below. The first 10 seconds are with sound effects, and the latter 10 seconds are without sound effects.
Snippets from LineUp India's launch campaign, produced by Plane Crazy Studios.
Did you feel as immersed in the latter 10 seconds of the video? I bet not. The fact that there was a sound effect integrated with every motion graphic stimulated more than one sense in your mind. It synchronized your eyes with your ears, it made the neurons in your mind more immersed into the dynamically of the content. Which obviously led to your brain being more subconsciously excited about the content you were watching.
Now you may wonder, in relation to the title of this article, how does it actually increase the engagement of your content? The answer is simple, sound effects lead to making your audience more immersed, engaged and excited about your content. It leads to your consumers consciously or subconsciously identifying that this piece of content is much more than just visuals. Which, as mentioned earlier, leads to a higher probability of engagement, which automatically increases your return on investment. Think about it, is this something that you’d like to miss out on?
Finally, we’re yet left with a single unanswered question. How can Nuke Sound help with that? At Nuke Sound, we provide end to end sound services for creative content, which includes a voice over, stock music or custom music, and finally, yes you guessed it right, tailor made SOUND EFFECTS! Our online audio post production services help creative producers increase the engagement of their content by providing the best sound that could possibly be produced for your content. Reach out to us at info@nukesound.com to learn more about this! Also feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or comments about the same.
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