Lesson 13 — Activity 3: Sound Techniques

Sound is a very important part of radio and TV ads. It is used for several purposes:

• to attract our attention

• to encourage us to go shopping (For example, some stores use very loud ads with announcers who speak very quickly. They might make us feel it is urgent to go shop at those stores before it is too late!)

• to associate the product with positive feelings

• to keep the product or company name in our minds so that we will remember it when we hear the song or sounds associated with the product or slogan

• to indicate the intended audience for the product (For example, diaper ads might feature the voices of children or the coos of babies; tire ads might feature a man's voice.)

Music plays an important role in ads as well. Sometimes an ad will use a popular song as its theme music. The product may then be associated with that song whenever we hear it, and not just when we hear it as part of an advertisement.

Sometimes songs or jingles are created for specific products and are catchy enough that we may sing, hum, or whistle them when we hear the ad and even when we do not. When this happens, the advertiser has been very successful at making us remember the product or brand name.