Music Placement and Sonic Branding in Coca-Cola’s Holiday Commercials: The Evolution of Consumer Marketing and its Influence on Sonic Branding and Music Placement in Television Commercials

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the question on how music placement and sonic branding have been influenced.by the leading schools of consumer marketing from the second half of the twentieth century until the present day. It provides a historical overview and musical analysis of four Coca-Cola television commercials from holiday campaigns from four distinct decades in marketing history. The leading theories of consumer marketing started to shift since the fifties from a company-oriented perspective towards a consumer-oriented perspective. This led to the rise of multisensory marketing, where the experiential factor of consumers became key for company branding. This development, which is still ongoing, has also had a significant impact on the use, composition, and arrangement of sound in advertisement. This research uses case and literature study to compare the developments and use of sound in television commercials with the historical developments of marketing theory. Furthermore, this study also focuses on musical variables like key, tempo, progression, and instrumentation in order to analyze a theoretical ‘ideal’ combination for the most effective sound in advertisements and branding. This will be done through literature study and secondary research, which combines the field of marketing and psychology with the field of musicology. Parameters such as a low arousal, a high level of familiarity and a high perceived pleasure are noted as the most important factors to organize sound in the most effective way for television commercials. (Dubé, Chebat, and Morin 1995, 305-320) The four Coca-Cola holiday commercials are analyzed regarding these parameters and are compared with the leading marketing theory of their relevant decades. The noticeable developments regarding music placement and sonic branding are described to identify a significant influence.