With a new episode every couple of weeks, The Sonic Truth Podcast Series, co-produced with Veritonic, explores the monumental shift to audio from a unique angle. In addition to featuring the stories and perspectives of media leaders, the series examines new data generated from research on how and why audio truly moves people.
Hitting on everything from voices in ads to sonic branding, the series will entertain, educate, and help businesses think about a sonic path forward.
Episode 3 – Live from Advertising Week – Smirnoff
Some brands talk the talk. Some even walk the walk. We’ll take that one step further: how many “sing the song?”
Ok, that’s a touch corny — but the point is serious. When it comes to the power of audio, Smirnoff goes deep on a couple of levels — something that will be evident to you as you listen to our latest episode of The Sonic Truth, out today. The brand is seriously passionate about the role that music plays across every consumer touchpoint, from experiential to its advertising. They’re so passionate that they often collaborate with artists directly in the studio. This is a brand that’s firmly entrenched music in its culture from the bottom up.
But more than just working to find the right sound and vibe for the brand, Smirnoff is about building community, which to them means working to foster a sense of inclusion.
Several studies that we at Veritonic have done with clients, from Pandora to Westwood One, have revealed the inequity that has long plagued media. The music that brands have leveraged, the voices that have narrated ads (the list goes on), have, for whatever reason, been predominantly male. The issue, in this and many other forms, is widely discussed, as we all know.
Smirnoff goes well beyond discussion. In conjunction with Spotify, they created the “equalizer campaign” to more proactively work against gender bias in music and media in general. The API enables consumers to not only recognize how skewed listening habits are, but to take action — for example, to increase the number of female artists crossing their playlists (which in turn gets more female artists paid).
Neil Shah, Global Marketing Director – Smirnoff at Diageo, is clear to point out that while this sort of bias is, in most cases, not deliberate, the remedy is: “It’s the unconscious bias that the data illuminates, but then the creativity allows you to do something about it.”
Learn more about how Smirnoff is “singing the song” of implementing real change in this episode of The Sonic Truth, captured live at Advertising Week in New York last month.