IMAGINE a television advert in which two lovers walk into the sunset. Now choose the backing music. A military band playing a Sousa march might not create the right mood. The same might be said of Brian Eno鈥檚 dissonant composition Ju Ju Space Jazz. The first is inappropriate, the second too complex. But if an advertising agency gets an appropriate piece of music and the right level of complexity, it could put viewers in the mood to buy, according to research conducted by psychologists at the University of Leicester.
Adrian North, David Hargreaves and Alice Binns are following in the footsteps of Daniel Berlyne, a Canadian psychologist who proposed in the 1970s that people鈥檚 enjoyment of music increases as it becomes more complex only up to a certain level. After that point, the more complex the music gets, the more people dislike it.
Berlyne defined the complexity of a piece of music by how predictable it is: complex music is difficult to predict. And he used laboratory tests to back up his theory. But his work has been criticised for being conducted in controlled environments, and for employing simple sequences of tones, rather than rich music. 鈥淲hat we were trying to do through this research was test the validity of Berlyne鈥檚 theory in everyday conditions,鈥� says North.
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The researchers chose an advert for chocolate and asked 25 volunteers to describe an appropriate piece of backing music using a fixed list of adjectives. Next, they recorded a series of pieces over the advert, varying in appropriateness 鈥� according to the volunteers鈥� description and complexity. Finally, they screened the various versions in front of 78 people, chosen at random, who were told that the ad was being tested before being aired.
The results show that the group generally disliked highly complex music even if it seemed appropriate. They also gave the thumbs down to inappropriate pieces. The favourite piece of backing music was appropriate and moderately complex.
On top of questions about the music itself, the Leicester researchers also asked about its effect. They found that the more the listeners liked the music, the more inclined they felt to go and buy the chocolate 鈥� although North points out that this doesn鈥檛 mean they would actually buy it. 鈥淚t could be inferred,鈥� he says, 鈥渢hat music is linked to the likelihood that people will go and buy the product.鈥�
Tim Berryman of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi does not entirely agree with the Leicester researchers鈥� conclusions. 鈥淲e obviously put a lot of thought on the appropriateness of the music accompanying an advertisement,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut there aren鈥檛 any hard and fast rules about the degree of complexity of the music that makes a good ad.鈥�
Berryman cites the example of a British Airways advert put together by his agency which used the relatively complex score from Delibes鈥檚 opera Lackm茅. 鈥淏ut the ad is very successful and the score is now the theme music for British Airways advertisements,鈥� says Berryman.