Imagine this.
You're walking down the street and your mobile device alerts you of what you want to know.
You don't know you want to know it, but it's smarter than you.
Based on your search-engine submissions, cookies, cached information and the analysis of every single social-media post you've ever written or liked, the computer in your pocket will sound the John Varvatos hook informing you that the boots you recently scoured eBay for are in a shop, just down the street and on sale.
Convenient, right?
Perhaps a new definition of lean-back advertising. The product finds the consumer.
So what is music's role?
Sound, one of the brain's strongest sensory stimuli, is an incredibly powerful tool. We just need to better use its ability to influence. If you're not familiar with Pavlov's Dog, a great example is the five-note McDonald's melody ("Ba da bah ba bah, I'm lovin' it.") We've been conditioned to associate those successive frequencies with the Golden Arches in front of the red background because sound and imagery are almost always presented simultaneously. We hear it so often that it brings comfort.
This past summer I needed an air conditioner. The first website I thought to visit was PC Richards. Why? Because I've been to Yankees games where the appliance-retailer's famed "whistle melody" is played after every strikeout.
It just works.
So far, I've refrained from using that dreaded, despicable, disgustingly dirty word: jingle.