Cliff Jones from the Sync Agency popped round to our London office today to give us a primer on sonic branding.

The main takeaway for me is that there really is some science to putting brands to music, and that — as with many things — NOT getting it wrong is halfway to getting it right (bookings went down after British Airways inadvisedly switched their telephone theme music to John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”).

Jones says we’re influenced by music, and we even make decisions based on it, quickly and unconsciously. We have little or no control over how it affects our emotions.

Most remarkable of all, Jones claims that even if you hate a particular tune, you will, in spite of yourself, manifest the intended physiological response to it when you hear it in an advertisement.

‘What we do,’ he says (and I’m paraphrasing), ‘is engineer people’s moods using music for emotional leverage.’

Sounds dangerous. Sounds interesting. Sounds like an opportunity.

(Note: I posted this first to Saffron’s website.)