In ads, there’s not just rhetoric with words and images—there’s also rhetoric with sounds, aural rhetoric. It should be clear to you that sounds can affect you—otherwise, you wouldn't have your own preferences in music! Just like advertisers use rhetoric to choose which words and images they will show, they use aural rhetoric to choose what sounds they will include in commercials. There are a few kinds of sounds that are used in advertising that are important for you to know:
Sounds can play a lot of important roles in advertising, but there are two main roles we'll talk about here: sounds can help us to focus on certain information, or they can distract us. For an example, think about people who listen to music while they exercise:
What does the music help exercisers to focus on? (Their workout, getting over the next hill, making one more rep, etc.)
What does the music help exercisers to get distracted from? (How tired or sore they are, how much longer they have to go, etc.)
It's basically proven that music affects how you exercise. Music included, there are basically four types of sounds that are used in advertising that we need to review here. Each of these things can help us to focus on something, or to be distracted from something else:
Music
Music influences our feelings, and it's most strongly connected to the rhetorical tool of pathos (emotion). Music can also affect ethos (trust/respect) if it comes in a form that we respect or appreciate. (For example, the Chevy "Like a Rock" commercial probably uses country music because it is aimed at an audience that appreciates that type of music.) However, music is most strongly connected to pathos. To think about how music affects an ad, take a look at these examples that someone picked out of effective (and ineffective) music in advertisements. Music can be very effective to emphasize the message of an ad—for instance, flashy and dramatic music can really make a commercial feel more exciting, like it does with this ad. Music can also distract us from the fact that an ad contains no actual information about a product. (For example, in the Mazda ad linked in the previous sentence, how much information is actually given about the car? None.) Music is a powerful tool of rhetoric!
Sound Effects
Sound effects come in a variety of forms. They can be peaceful, like this one, or they can be really distracting, like this one. What do these sounds help you to focus on, or be distracted from? In the "Extras" section below, there is a great TED video about the ways that sound and sound effects can affect us. Check it out!
Jingles
A jingle is a short song that is used to advertise a product and help us remember it. Even if you didn't see the advertisement for this jingle or this jingle, you would probably still be able to recognize what products they advertised. That's the power of a jingle! In this case, the sound is helping us to focus by remembering something. Every good product will come up with a jingle, just like every good product will have a distinct logo.
Themes
Themes are basically like longer versions of a jingle. They don't appear in many advertisements, but they are all over the place in movies and video games. If you heard this theme or this theme, you would probably know exactly where they came from. Characters in a story can also have their own themes, too; check out Dumbledore's theme from the Harry Potter movies, or Gollum's theme from the Lord of the Rings movies. Can you remember that some version of these songs often came on during parts of the movie where these characters were featured, or where people were thinking or talking about the characters? Themes are another way to support a message, though they don't come up as often in advertising. The exception would be music that has become associated with a particular idea, like the classical composer Tchaikovsky's song "Romeo and Juliet," which has become so connected to the idea of finding love that it is featured in a lot of commercials. If you want to make viewers think of love, then that song's probably your best bet (as seen in ads and shows like this one, this one, and this one).
Extra Stuff
This awesome video from TED shows four different ways that sound affects us (and it affects us a LOT).