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When A Non-Customer Buys Your Idea With Just Attention As Currency
The World According To The Discovery Channel
It kind of makes you want to break into song? Yup. The Discovery Channel has found a way to remind us that watching their channel can be fantastic. If Mother Earth had a flag, this preppy tune could be her call to remote arms. One might have expected it from The Gap or Coca Cola or The All Black rugby team for that matter.
The use of characteristic sound in specific marketing campaigns is a well-worn boot. Even when customers process a television ad, seeing first and hearing second, sound is more important than image. Once you have it in your mind, you can distribute it by imitation - viral marketing 101.
There is the Brrrrr which lives outside the TV as noun and verb (for ordering that bottle of Coke of course). On the other end of the spectrum could be the great South African micro site for Audi TT. It is exhilarating and almost Schindler's List-like.
This Discovery Channel offering is more like microwave melted cheese. It is a cliché and nearly irritating and I know it. But guess who was humming what in today's traffic? Does it stick because the "basic values" expressed in the 1-minute advert match some pre-determined ideas of my own? Can a customer be a customer without paying anything? Is brand value measurable beyond revenue and profit margins? Maybe next year Millward Brown will shed light and start to investigate virtually. It's not the same as a brand awareness survey.
Perhaps Stephen Hawking featured in the ad because he too is just a customer of Discovery Channel ideas? Then again, the Discovery Channel benefits by endorsement from Mr Hawking. And Mr Hawking's book sales benefit by endorsement from the Discovery Channel.