Advertisers Are Controlling Your Brain With Music

You may not know it, but your brain is not your own.

Your brain is Nationwide’s and McDonald’s and Oscar Meyer’s.

They use music to influence you to buy their products with jingles.

Ohio State University explores this concept in a study called Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm.

The study finds that “music tends to linger in the listener’s mind … even when the mind is an unwilling host.”

This is what we call an earworm.

“Thus,” it goes on, “the association of music with the identity of a certain product may substantially aid product recall.”

And advertisers are serious about getting you to identify their product with earworm-y music. They must have your full attention.

“…Advertising music is perhaps the most meticulously crafted and most fretted-about music in history,” the study says.

“Nationally produced television advertisements in particular may be considered among the most highly polished cultural artifacts ever created.”

Companies ain’t messing around when it comes to controlling your brain with music.