In the first of a series of interviews with media professionals, soundlounge asks top strategist Charlie Robertson why so few communications professionals use sound to the best effect.

SL What do you think are the best examples of the way sound is used currently?
CR The best restaurant in the world now serves sound along with its food, as Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck in Bray experiments with the sound of taste in his search for perfection. i-Pods accompany the seafood to engender the spirit of being at the coastline with, a crash of waves, the drag of it shoal and the sound of the sea lapping at the shore I have heard tell.

In the recent Architecture Week in Britain a pair of Sonic Rooms was twinned. In rural Yorkshire the room was full of the sounds of the passing traffic of urban London, which presumably was still noisy enough to enter the room to drown out the occasional bleating from Yorkshire of sheep. In the art world we were invited to phone in to hear the sounds of Vatnajokull glacier in Iceland melting, an idea to bring the realities of global warming ever closer to our daily lives perhaps. Flickr looks to offer us sound accompaniments to our on-line photo libraries.

SL So restauranteurs, geeks and architects get what sound can do, but don’t you think brand owners and agencies are a tad traditional in their use of sound?
CR It is clear that sound is moving up on the agenda in a wide variety of fields and will do so in brand communications strategy. The power of music to enhance advertising executions has long been heralded. Some industry luminaries even put it as their first source of inspiration to start generating ideas when they get a brief and others have claimed music to not just enhance a commercial but to be 50-70% of its impact. How many research companies set about measuring such claimed effects rooted in advertising soundtracks? Too many seem stuck with trotting out the usual suspects of a key frame followed by a logo or a tagline as a prompt. Research is in danger of simplistic tautology of the impact of communications by creating a catchall numeric scoring system based in history.

SL Which brands, in your opinion, have recently harnessed sound most effectively?
CR Credit to those behind the latest Lynx (Axe) commercial, which elevate sound to be the core idea, with BOM CHICKA WAH WAH, as the brand’s new special ingredient in babe magnetism, a beguiling, sexy, funny commercial with an idea that should easily extend beyond TV. It is not alone as an idea based on sound but will likely get highest profile in this genre for YouTube watchers.

SL What are do brand guardians doing wrong when it comes to the use of sound to create impact and have a positive effect on ROI?
CR In the perpetual race to get an edge and satisfy the never ending demand for relevance, credibility and distinction in communications more people will revisit the old adage of “Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage” sound will move up from enhancement of ideas based on Engagement Theory, to being thought of as part of Brand Strategy and indeed brand equity. Imagine champagne without the pop. Yet sound is a currently the poor cousin in corporate identity, an area which is rich in its detailed specifications on colour, hue, shape, scale and style. The best brand identity manuals are exemplars of graphic design in themselves.

SL Do you think that the age-old template of creative briefs has got something to do with this?
CR Even in the creative briefs on developing brand experiences, which incorporate desired mood tone and sound we should question how rigorous this is tied in to the definitions of the brand equity, as opposed to merely being described in terms of mood enhancement in physical environments.

In an industry with a heritage rooted in copywriting, art direction and graphic design, sound is relegated in consideration, attention, time resource and understanding. There is no shortage of good theories. Conducting creative briefings using the five senses approach is known but rarely executed

‘Tone of Voice’ is the weakest element of written creative briefs. It is a misnomer, as it’s usually defaults to being a description of brand character, thus tone or sound is left to be implicit. When people talk of 360-degree communications they resort to peppering media channels to plans, rooted in an advertising idea, not discussing the totality of the brand.

SL What do you think the communications industry needs to change to ensure that sound is utilised in the most strategic and memorable way?
CR Maybe when there are more advertising ideas dependent on sound this will force a more enlightened approach. More BOM CHICKA WAH WAH, in media planning would be no bad thing. In the continual scrabble for edge and advantage, when every pixel counts, we would do well to spend more time thinking of the brand in the round and bring to life opportunities for Sonic Design and Sonic Brand Equity.

Hearing is the universal alerting sense in all vertebrates. There are some people who can taste, hear, and smell colours. It is a rare neurological condition called synesthesia. Where science leads brands tend to follow.

When it comes to art, in Shakespeare’s time you went to hear a play not see a play. In contemporary art when you are not listening to a glacier melting how about Cybersonica with Kinetica Museum and Soundtoys.net ‘Soundwaves’ exhibition? This showcases a range of engaging sound based works that explore the convergence of sound, art and technology, that move beyond the ‘screen, keyboard, mouse’ to explore new and exciting approaches to creative interactivity - responding to physical input, proximity, sound, kinetics, elapsed time and the surrounding environment. Where art leads advertising tends to follow.

Charlie Robertson is founder of the Red Spider network, an international, independent brand strategy consultancy