A New Form of Marketing
| quote: | Audio ads beam message for your ears only
Updated Sun. May. 25 2008 7:31 AM ET
Andy Johnson, CTV.ca News Staff
Imagine you're walking along a busy downtown street, minding your own business. Suddenly, you hear a voice whispering in your ear: "Who's there? What's that? It's not your imagination."
The cryptic message is delivered in such an intimate fashion it could almost be coming from inside your own head.
You look around and no one else seems to notice. You take one more step and the words cease.
You've just been the target of a new form of audio marketing that can send a focused beam of sound directly into your brain. Well, almost.
The technology works by beaming waves of hypersonic sound at a pitch that can't be detected by the human ear.
However, when those sound waves strike an object, such as a human body, they suddenly become audible in the immediate area of the object -- allowing personalized marketing that can target one person in a crowd of hundreds.
In December, the A&E Television Network used the technology to deliver the "Who's there? What's that?" message from a billboard on a busy New York street to advertise a new show about ghost hunters called "Paranormal State."
It's also being used in grocery stores in France and in some museums, and could soon be turning traditional advertising on its ear here in Canada too, said Ken Hardy, a marketing professor at the University of Western Ontario.
"You step into the spotlight of sound and if you step out, just a foot or so away, you won't hear anything," he told CTV's Canada AM in a recent interview.
"It's this ability to cast the sound in a tight little circle that is so novel and so effective."
'Spooky' sound
The New York experiment was a massive success. Once word got out about the sound-projecting billboard, people started showing up in droves just to check it out.
"It was spooky for people to suddenly hear sound. And of course the sound was a whisper that was related to the show so it all fit together so I think in that application it was effective," Hardy said.
Hardy said most companies are now putting 65 per cent of their advertising budget into point-of-purchase marketing that tries to attract buyers at the shelf, compared to just 25 per cent for traditional forms of advertising.
As a result, Hardy predicts the new form of audio advertising will soon join the advertising gauntlet most of us find ourselves in on a daily basis.
But the technology is so new, and so untested, that many questions remain about how, or if, it will boost sales. It is also uncertain how people will react to such an intimate form of target-marketing.
"I don't think it's an invasion of privacy but I do think people might react badly until they get used to it," Hardy said.
"I'm not sure everybody wants to hear it so I think as a direct marketing technique it's something that needs experimentation."
A talking pop machine that quietly urges passersby to drink Coke, might be a little creepy, Hardy admitted. |
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I can easily see this falling into the wrong hands and being used for less than ethical purposes. Cool, yet creepy.
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....or the ones in which you recieve a voicemail and when you check it the dood goes...." are you haveing debt problems ......"
