The Sound of Branding

I almost always use Shell gasoline in my car, even driving by other gas stations though the dial on my dashboard is perilously close to E.

I don't know why. But Alvin Collis made me think about it.

Collis doesn't sell gas. In fact, he's senior vp of brand for Muzak (and this will be the only reference in this piece to “elevator music”). But Collis doesn't even sell Muzak – he sells music! He urges retailers to invest in the importance of ambient sounds at the point of sale, what Muzak calls “audio architecture,” to grow brand and create memorability.

After all, he insists, retailers are not building stores, they're building experiences. Some understand that and build NikeTowns, Anthropologies, Crate & Barrels, Virgin Megastores, spaceships.

“When you return from the Grand Canyon, what do you talk about?” Collis demanded rhetorically, speaking at the October meeting of the Cincinnati/Dayton/Columbus chapter of the Institute of Store Planners. “Do you say, 'Well, it encompasses 277 miles of the Colorado River, includes over a million acres of land, is 10 miles at its widest and 6000 feet at its deepest'?

“No,” he said, “you describe the grandeur, the beauty, the breathtaking vistas.”

It's about the experience! “When people go to your store,” Collis says, “what do they talk about? The experience, not the design details. That's your brand.”

Brands become powerful when they sidle up to you, get to know you and then burrow inside your mind, heart and soul.

One of the most powerful brands in the world, says Collis, is Coca-Cola, “but certainly not because it's nutritious – nor even particularly thirst-quenching.” He notes the familiar logo on the equally familiar bottle or can; that first fizz as the top is snapped or the cap twisted; raising the can to your mouth, or pouring the bottle into a glass; and then the expectation until the sweet cola taste hits your tongue.

“Drinking a Coke is an experience.”

Okay. But gasoline? Evidently that, too, can be an experience. When Collis moved from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast, he found there were no BP gas stations. He had always used BP. He said he had difficulty retraining himself to pull into any other gas station.

All gasoline comes from the same refineries purifying the same crude oil from the same hydrocarbons and other compounds that came from the same fossil fuels from the same 3 billion-year-old plant life. But for some reason, Collis preferred BP. I prefer Shell, but I couldn't tell you why. It obviously, though, has to do with an emotional connection to the brand.

Muzak – and DMX and PlayNetwork and others – try to marry the emotional content of the retail brand to the sound in the store. When one department store organization's ceo demanded of him, “What's the return on my investment?” Collis noted that the chain had put an expensive marble floor in its flagship store. “What's the ROI on that?” he demanded back.

Sometimes you can't directly measure return. You make leaps of faith every day – in design, in merchandising, in personnel, in purchases – based on what you believe in.

By the way, ever wondered what a Gap sweater sounds like? According to Collis, it sounds like Louis Armstrong, Mel Torme and Morcheeba. Why? Call it a leap of faith.