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Standing out from the crowd

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Dan Lafferty, Head of Music and Voice
Posted in Audio Branding, Music Industry | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

When you want your brand’s music to be exactly as you imagined it – perfectly congruent and instilled with values beyond the sum of its parts – there’s only one route to go. Having your own piece of music composed can elevate your brand to new heights. You can be uniquely the same and different, all at the same time. The evidence is all around us.

Why do businesspeople wear suits? Hippies have long hair? And football teams wear colours?

There may be many answers to these questions but it probably boils down to just two things: sameness and difference.

If you think about it, we’re all part of exclusive clubs that are defined by who’s in and who most certainly isn’t. Our jobs, our friends, where we socialise, what we do to relax, our taste in music, film, TV, books, our politics, our clothes, our town, our country, our accents, our turns of phrase – the list is endless.

And considering the cultural weight we give to sameness and difference it would be sensible to give the issue some thought when it comes to choosing music that will represent your company’s brand.

In the world of cinema, many of the most memorable films have original soundtracks: Star Wars, Back to the Future, Jaws, Indiana Jones.

It’s likely that most people would be able to hum at least one of those theme tunes. And if they were all played to you, the chances are you’d be able to name even more. But what does this tell us?

It shows that with originality comes exclusivity. None of those tunes have an association with anything other than the movies they were in – you hear the music and you see the product in your mind’s eye. They have positive attributes coded into their DNA – originality, uniqueness and exclusivity – different from the films with unoriginal and uninspiring music and the same as other films with original, high quality music.

We live in a world that puts a lot of stock in originality and uniqueness – individuals and organisations who exhibit these qualities are generally viewed in a very favourable light so they’re definitely worth aspiring to for your brand.

As we all know, some people seem to feel compelled to copy original things. Perhaps it’s because their culture has conditioned them to admire the latent attributes of originality and uniqueness. The irony, then, is that in the process of copying an original, the work loses one of its key qualities – originality – which kills the golden goose.

An original piece of music, penned by talented writers, performed by exceptional musicians and crafted by great producers will make you sound the way you want to sound, with the added ingredients of uniqueness and exclusivity blended in for extra kudos.

And because it’s something that specifically tailored for you, it’ll be fully brand congruent, meaning your brand values can shine through with consistency and style across every touchpoint.

On top of that, it’ll be your music and yours alone; something that’ll have longevity and something that none of your customers have any prior feelings about. Simply, your brand consistency will be assured.

In turn, you’ll be the same as a lot of respected and admired multi-national brands, and different to many of your less inspired competition.

 

Keeping your audio brand relevant

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Dan Lafferty, Head of Music and Voice
Posted in Audio Branding, Music Industry | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

If you’re a fan of popular music, then you enjoy hearing the latest artists and songs. It goes with the territory. And whether you’re into rock, indie, pop or any other genre, there’s a never-ending supply of music to explore. It’s an important lesson for the world of business and audio branding – keeping music fresh and relatively current is essential for keeping your brand relevant.

Brand congruity across all touchpoints is the name of the game. Using audio branding that’s at odds with a visual and experiential brand will mean a business won’t reap the huge potential rewards of brand consistency. Conversely, when a company gets its sound right it can add to and augment both brand and business by making the organisation sound as good as it looks.

This means that the wider the variety of music available to choose from, each with subtle differences in feel, the more it will help a company to pinpoint the piece of music that perfectly represents its brand. Which of course brings us back to brand congruity.

But that’s not the only benefit of a broad choice of musical compositions. We’re all victims of fashion in one way or another. Cultural influence affects us all; our tastes change. Hands up who had an avocado bathroom suite? Over time, music can become old and tired too. And using outdated or unfashionable music can have a negative impact on the perceptions of your brand. So it’s good to have fresh choice for when that time comes.

Often, large corporates will exploit the public’s hunger for all things new by using current or back-in-fashion music in their commercials. Of course, for most companies that’s not a possibility but there are low cost, effective audio branding alternatives in the shape of bespoke musical compositions. These are definitely worth considering for a company that wants to stand out from the competition without breaking the bank. Better yet, they can move with the times. For instance, Nokia’s audio logo needed a 21st century make-over so a competition was held. The brief: keep the same notes and rhythm and the rest is up to you. The results are very interesting.

Whichever route a company takes, getting to the point of finding the right piece of music for your business can be a time consuming but worthwhile task.

Begin by thinking about songs that you like. Maybe there’s a style, a tempo or feel that you think is indicative of your brand. Then write down some examples of songs from that sector that have the right qualities. After that, start listening to the songs on your list – it’s then that you may be close to finding the feel you’re looking for.

But of course that’s only the start.

At PH Media we go through a similar process all the time to create work that captures a feel. Here’s what happens:

• The first stage is identifying styles that need rejuvenating and a brief is developed
• From there (like little thumbnail sketches) ideas are collected together and they’re assessed on how accurately they fit the brief
• Once assessed, the demos with merit are discussed to create a tighter brief
• New demos are made as a result of the tighter brief

This process continues as many times as it needs to, until we are satisfied that we have the bones of the perfect track.

The rest of the process consists of adding the small flourishes to give our productions the touch of class that put us in a different league. These subtle changes and movements are built in to sit neatly below the voiceovers – adding to the interest without being intrusive, and allowing the content of the message to shine.

Here’s the latest track, aptly named ‘Figure of Eight’, we’ve created using the process above:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When creating ‘Figure of Eight’ we were looking to add to our ‘motivational and friendly’ category, which meant that we had to strike the balance between motivated and friendly.

The difficulty with motivational music is it can often be construed as aggressive. Creating a track that’s motivational and friendly requires careful guidance through the ideas stage. It’s essential we keep a firm eye on the brief at all times and not move too far towards either value.

We think we pitched it just right with ‘Figure of Eight’ – click here to have a listen and see if you agree.

To give any feedback or ask Dan a question, email him on daniel.lafferty@phmg.com

Do you copy?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Matt Hill, Senior Copywriter
Posted in Copywriting | Leave a comment

Last time it happened, I was at a party.

‘What do you do?’ said a man. He was a whopping great bloke with a point to prove – his handshake was crushing.

‘I’m a copywriter,’ I said.

He asked which legal firm I worked for – he reckoned he might know them.

I shook my head. ‘No, like a writer. Copy means commercial writing. I don’t really know why. I write words for businesses.’

He looked a bit blank about that as well. ‘So you don’t put the curly-cuh next to companies’ products?’

I shook my head again. ‘Have you seen Mad Men?’ I asked.

‘A few episodes.’

‘OK, I’m like Peggy Olson.’

*

I don’t know many copywriters who haven’t had the same conversation. Why not simply say ‘I’m a writer’, you could ask. Well, it can make you sound like you’re trying to be some kind of Hemingway, which doesn’t often work. Plus you always get the impression you’re about to have someone pat your head and say ‘aww’ – or ask if you’re the next JK Rowling. Say ‘copywriter’, though, and it’s got a bit of gravitas. At least until you remember that most people don’t have a clue what it means.

Still. The curious will dig. And me, I’ll say, ‘I write scripts for the phone, copy for websites, for direct mailers – stuff like that. But mainly my company does on-hold marketing.’

‘Is that actually creative?’ someone else might ask. ‘Isn’t that just writing “thanks for holding” and all that?’

The implication being you don’t need real writers to write that sort of fluff. The common perception (and misconception) being that on-hold messages are all filler, meaningless platitudes or plain old disingenuous. Or all three.

‘No,’ I’ll say. ‘We’re actually doing all we can to change that idea. Because, in layman’s terms, my team writes targeted advertising not unlike the stuff you’d find on your local radio station, or even a voiceover script for a TV campaign.’ (Maybe I wouldn’t put it quite so eloquently.)

And I might go on. I might explain how we know the clichés, so we know how to avoid them. Or why these days, fewer and fewer of our productions actually feature the phrase ‘thank you for holding’ at all.

I’d say that we take plenty of time out to understand the brands and businesses we write for. And how, more often than not, our product tends to win over the sceptics.

Is there a formula to making more of the time a caller spends on hold? No. If there were a formula, there’d be little point in the creative side of it. But what I do know is this: we’re able to surprise listeners because we acknowledge their being on hold and neatly turn it on its head. If you can say ‘We know you’re hanging on and don’t want to keep you waiting. But while you’re here…’ you’re turning what’s sometimes seen as a negative experience into something more positive. Maybe an opportunity. If you replace ‘thank you for holding’ with something valuable, useful, entertaining, you’re going even further.

Ultimately, it comes from a way of thinking – not just writing. Our first thought isn’t ‘What do callers usually hear and expect to hear?’ but ‘What would I want to hear?’ And that, I suppose, is the difference between copying the pre-existing formula… and copywriting.

And who knows? One day we might just end up doing it for a company that puts the little © next to a product name. Copywriting about copyright. That guy at the party would explode.

 

Where on hold meets online

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Olivia Brocklesby, Audio Branding Manager at PH Media Group
Posted in Audio Branding | Leave a comment

The results are in. ICM’s recent omnibus survey of more than 2,000 consumers tells us that 60% of callers are sitting at their computer when they pick up the phone. So while your callers may be on hold, they’re certainly still plugged in. It’s an opportunity to bring more enquiries your way.

Modern business communications come with a set of expectations. Call a business, and it won’t be unreasonable to expect a branded message, auto-attendant service or even a handler’s greeting; a scripted welcome. And just as we have to navigate complete call-routing menus to find the right department, we can also expect to be put on hold.

To explore the stats and figures behind these calls – and even the habits of callers themselves – PH Media Group commissioned ICM Research to conduct an in-depth omnibus survey. It’s a survey that’s given us some invaluable insight, and revealed an interesting relationship between traditional telephone use and the digital world.

Today, more than 70% of people are put on hold during more than half the calls they make. Of these people, 60% are sitting at their computer. This isn’t unusual in itself – 72% of personal calls to businesses are made at home on a landline, and we can imagine that many of these callers will have used their computers to find the relevant number. But consider that the caller is not only connected to you, but connected to the internet, and you have the opportunity to capture imagination and interest, and direct it straight to your front door.

Callers waiting on hold or being transferred are essentially a captive audience – and they want to be entertained. The ICM Research highlights that 73% of callers want to hear something more than beeps and silence. Play targeted messages instead, and you have somebody engaged and listening. Now, you can cross-market services, provide handy information… and drive traffic directly to your business online by promoting your website. Suddenly, your On-Hold Marketing isn’t just a useful customer service tool (though it can certainly be used to show you care) – it’s a lead generator.

Make an offer that can’t be refused, complete with a web URL as a call-to-action, and your callers will take a look – arriving on your landing page while they’re still on the phone. After all, it’s going to beat twiddling their thumbs. You can even measure the effectiveness of a campaign by including a specific, phone-only URL on the message.

It’s a tactic that works. Howarth Timber, one of the UK’s largest timber groups, used On-Hold Marketing to announce and promote its upgraded website to waiting callers. As MD Neale Brewster explains, “We’ve invested a lot of time and resources in a great new website, which we’ve designed to improve our customers’ experience of dealing with us. On-Hold Marketing allows us to promote these services and facilities, no matter how the customer contacts us.”

Keep this in mind while you consider that 68% of surveyed callers say they are put on hold for longer than one minute, and it’s clear you’ve more than enough time to make a meaningful connection – and make your On-Hold Marketing service work in perfect synergy with your website.

What can you do in 30 seconds?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Olivia Brocklesby, Audio Branding Manager at PH Media Group
Posted in Audio Branding | Leave a comment

Stick the kettle on. Make some toast. Get nearly halfway round Silverstone in a Formula One car (if your name’s Michael). From the conventional to the unconventional, you can do a lot in 30 seconds. But what if we told you 30 seconds was long enough to build your brand – and see a genuine return on investment?

A PH Media Group survey of 4,000 UK businesses has revealed that the average on hold time is 33 seconds. For organisations of all sizes, that’s 33 seconds of genuine opportunity. Here’s some advice and useful tips on how you can do even more with that time.

Imagine a conversation in which nobody speaks for 30 seconds. Well, it’s not a conversation at all. It’s just plain awkward. That’s the kind of experience a caller might have with an organisation playing silence on hold. Now imagine 30 seconds of music, blended with short but sharply informative messages that give your callers something to think about, and benefit from.

You won’t need to know that this is the basic tenet of On-Hold Marketing. By understanding that you can communicate with your callers, even when you’re not necessarily talking to them directly, you can build confidence in your service. You can build awareness of your products and services. And you can build your name. Add special offers and cross-selling opportunities into the mix, and that 33 seconds of on-hold time has been transformed into a platform for relevant, targeted advertising. Now it sounds like you’ve thought of everything.

One of our major clients in the dental industry found an inspiring way to generate extra revenue with On-Hold Marketing. Wanting more dental hygienists to buy their products over the phone, their team decided to look closely at the profile of their callers. Typical callers were found to be 20 to 25-year-old women, which led to an offer designed specifically for that demographic. For every purchase over £1,000, the On-Hold Marketing said, the caller would receive a free pair of GHDs.

With the offer in place, our client saw its average order value increase by an impressive 20%. It’s the perfect example of understanding your callers, and using that 30 seconds of hold time to deliver something of real value. Like that slice of toast you made in 30 seconds this morning: simple… but satisfying.

How does your organisation stack up? Here are the average hold times for five key industries:

  • Sign makers kept callers on hold for 72 seconds
  • Handling and access equipment firms kept callers on hold for 54 seconds
  • Organisations in the legal services industry kept callers on hold for 42 seconds
  • Car and van dealerships kept their callers on hold for 38 seconds
  • Financial service providers kept callers on hold for 36 seconds

Making more of callers’ time on hold

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Olivia Brocklesby, Audio Branding Manager at PH Media Group
Posted in Audio Branding | Leave a comment

Following a successful marketing campaign, callers can be like buses. You’ve waited for one, and now three have come along at once. Getting to your callers quickly is your first priority, yet placing them on hold can be inevitable. Here’s how you can use this time to its best advantage.

It’s said 94% of a budget is invested in getting customers to call, but only 6% is used to maintain that call. Don’t believe it? In the recent programme, ‘Richard Wilson On Hold’, a team of volunteers dialled the nation’s call centres to find out how long it took to get through. Some were connected in minutes, but some calls ran to more than half an hour, with one in particular to an hour. There was actual astonishment when it took just 40 seconds to get through to one bank’s call centre.

It’s a trend backed by PH Media Group’s ICM research, which highlighted that over 70% of people are put on hold during more than half their calls to businesses, and that 68% of these are put on hold for longer than one minute.

So what do callers hear while they’re waiting?

Telecoms companies often provide businesses with a standard and often simplistic service with a generic “we’ll be just a moment” message which tells callers they’re “valued customers”. The problem is that while yes, it’s rather nice of you to thank somebody for holding every twenty seconds, after five minutes it just stops being believable. After 10 minutes it becomes a downright lie. It can make for angry customers, who in the best-case scenario might have a shout about it… and in the worst-case scenario might hang up and call elsewhere.

Just think: you could be using this time so much more effectively – and promoting your brand in a far more positive light. An apology for the wait is polite every now and then… and yet you could be telling your customers so much more.  Because what you have here is a captive audience, ready and attentively waiting for your call handlers to say hello.

While they’re listening so closely, they’re in the best place to hear all about your products and services. Informative messages on hold work just like the film trailers at the cinema – your customers are waiting for the big event and they’re not going anywhere. Play them something interesting in the interim to tantalise their taste buds (and say more than sorry) and you might even make a sale. Just remember that the analogy doesn’t extend to you asking callers to turn off their phones.

It’s also about adding value to the call. To be helpful and understanding, you could also inform callers of other ways they can access your information. Tell them about your website and the products and services they can browse or buy, 24 hours a day. In turn, you cut call waiting times and drive more traffic online.

So, if you have to put your customers on hold – and in all probability this will happen – remember that it’s always worthwhile telling them something useful while they’re there.

Tracks in the snow

Posted on December 19, 2011 by the producer
Posted in Fun & Games | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It starts in early November. The first request arrives in our inbox for a client to change the music on their on-hold production to something a little less corporate and a little more… festive. More arrive in the following days. The trickle becomes a steady stream. Increasing numbers of clients want to update their productions with information about their Christmas offers and let callers know about their altered opening hours over the holiday period. And so out come the Christmas tracks…

We’ve built up a collection of them over the years and like to think we have the right kind of Christmas track for each company that requests one. Want something modern and upbeat? We’ve a medley inspired by some of the biggest Christmas chart hits from the past thirty years. Want a more traditional sound? We can supply orchestral arrangements of much-loved yuletide favourites like We Wish You A Merry Christmas, The 12 Days of Christmas and The Holly & The Ivy. Fancy something between the two styles? No problem. How about a fun pop-driven medley of well-known Christmas songs? God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with a backbeat.

Medleys are the key to a good on-hold Christmas track, of course. With such a fabulous back catalogue of Christmas songs and carols in our culture, many of them hundreds of years old (it’s believed the words to O Come O Ye Faithful originated in the 13th century), why limit yourself to just a single tune? Everyone has a favourite Christmas song, and when you choose a Christmas medley to play under your on-hold production, the chances of your callers hearing it are greatly increased. And if they don’t like the one that’s playing, there’ll be another one along very soon!

No one actually enjoys waiting on-hold on the telephone (even we admit this) but with a little Christmassy tune in the background, we like to think we can help to put a little of the festive spirit into a phone caller’s day.

So long as it’s not too early in November.

A tale for Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Matt Hill, Senior Copywriter
Posted in Copywriting, Fun & Games | Tagged , | Leave a comment

When I was a sprout, there was a Christmas when my parents took me to see some of their friends. Let’s call them Auntie Beryl and Uncle Bob. They weren’t relatives but they had that exclusive status your parents award to friends to offset the fact they got pregnant.

Beryl and Bob lived in a country palace; a sprawling, boundless land of lawns and footpaths, sheds and greenhouses. You needed a ride-on lawnmower to fetch the post from the entrance gate in the morning. A cottage with multi-level gardens, multi-award-winning rockeries – their bushes and trees strung with sparkling cobwebs and elegant lighting. And it had snowed. It was a little bit of Narnia pulled through the cupboard and reshaped in Derbyshire.

Anyway, Beryl could’ve been my real mother for all I cared. Because inside, by an open fireplace, I’m given a box of Bob’s childhood Meccano. While the adults talked about mortgages and buy-to-let schemes and the Falklands or whatever else adults in the late-eighties talked about, I got on with engineering. Outside, the snow was relentless. Inside, the fire crackled and the wine flowed and the adults banged on about mortgages.
Next news it had gone eleven. Half-asleep, with my parents issuing the same threats about Santa Claus they’d issued since early October, I was told to get upstairs before He turned up with my presents.

And then it happened. Into the still-warm ashes of the fire, there fell a great big black boot. I froze, weighed it all up, and bolted off to bed, terrified. My parents tell me they’d never seen a child move so quickly.

That was Christmas – magic and white and memorable. My favourite Christmas memory, actually. Uncle Bob up a ladder, shuffling about on a snowy roof, to drop an old welly down the chimney.

I guess I’d been a good boy that year.

It wasn’t until a few years later that Christmas was betrayed. The long and short of it: I realised the tooth-fairy’s handwriting was the same as Father Christmas’ handwriting. And that both sets of handwriting looked a lot like the scrawl on a note to a teacher from Dad.

Heartbroken, I accepted that there was no Father Christmas.

With the magic of Christmas so cruelly shattered by just a few words on paper, you’d forgive me for being pretty cynical when it comes to Christmas.

Well, I am for eleven months of the year. But come December, and come those first carols, I teeter on the edge of devolving into a gooey child. There’s something about traditional Christmas music that gets to me. There’s a purity about it – something very old for a time when everything has to be shiny and new. Maybe it seems to be a decent-enough replacement for Father Christmas. About as close as I’ll get to the feeling when Uncle Bob dropped a boot down the chimney.

And then there’s the writing. Along with the rest of the team, I’ve probably written hundreds of Christmas-themed updates in the last two months; many more in the few years I’ve been here. Somehow, despite having drained my account to buy gifts for my nearest and dearest, I find there’s something extra-appealing about writing Christmas copy – it’s got its own set of words, its own puns. It’s very warm and extra-friendly.
And now I know exactly where all the special offers are, I’ve picked up a few bargains besides.

Free Christmas greetings for your waiting callers

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Mike Cooke, Head of Production at PH Media Group
Posted in Fun & Games | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

We’re in the business of helping organisations to sound as good as they look on the phone, on the web and on site. We’re the leaders in providing companies with brand-congruent On-Hold Marketing, which replaces tinny music, beeps and silence with high-quality, informative and engaging messages. These messages are written by professional copywriters, recorded by leading voice artists and mixed by seasoned telephone audio producers. This year, we asked our talent to come up with two Christmas productions that any business could use, and we’re offering them to you free of charge.

Download Christmas Production 1

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Download Christmas Production 2

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You can preview and download the productions above. You might need to contact your business telephone system provider for information on playing your chosen production down the line to waiting callers. To get your own bespoke messages and playback equipment, contact us on 0808 159 6153.

Seasoned greetings

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Olivia Brocklesby, Audio Branding Manager at PH Media Group
Posted in Fun & Games | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It’s not always easy to fill out a blank greeting card, or find an original way to convey our best wishes. That’s what professional writers are for, and we’ve got seven of them at PH Media Group. We’ve asked our scribes to step away from their On-Hold Marketing scripts to help our readers add some memorable Christmas messages to their self-made voicemail greetings, out-of-hours messages, tannoy announcements and Christmas cards. Here’s the (brandied) fruit of their labour.


1. Wishing you good times, good cheer, and a happy new year!
2. Wishing you time to enjoy the simple pleasures of this holiday season. Happy Christmas from all of us at [business name].
3. Happy Christmas and best wishes for a new year of happiness and prosperity.
4. On behalf of all of us at [business name], happy Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. We look forward to working with you again in 2012.
5. Wishing you and your loved ones all the wonder and magic of Christmas.
6. Wishing you all the happiness of the season and peace and prosperity
in the new year.
7. Let us remember that Christmas is not a holiday, it’s a holy day. Have a happy one.
8. May the timeless message of Christmas fill your heart and home with joy today and throughout the coming year.
9. Christmas is in the air! [Business name] wishes you all the joy, hope and
wonder of the season.
10. Warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful holiday and a
very happy New Year.
11. The year-end brings no greater pleasure than the chance to offer you our season’s greetings and best wishes for a happy, healthy and properous New Year.
12. May all the joys of the season be yours.
13. Wishing you a beautiful holiday season and a New Year marked by peace,
prosperity and happiness.
14. May the holidays deliver an abundance of happiness and good cheer! Season’s greetings from [business name].
15. Warmest thoughts and best wishes for a Christmas filled with happiness, joy and prosperity. May your holidays be merry and bright.
16. Wishing you a holiday season filled with peace and joy.
17. Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a healthy, prosperous New Year. May the warmth and peace of the holiday season be yours.

Simple, elegant and meaningful, our writers’ words can be used to close your recorded messages, as a one-off announcement for shoppers or employees, or to make your holiday closing announcements a little warmer.  Not forgetting your On-Hold Marketing, IVR, Auto Attendant, Web Audio and other scripted messages.