Executive Summary: Sound in its various forms has been the part of human life.

This study is conducted to understand to what extent sound is effective in taking a TV commercial to the Indian customers. The advertising in India is now in a stage in which the companies are trying to define and redefine about how their brands sound. While the advertising agencies are involved in the process of sound branding, it is necessary to know how far the sound in TV commercial is effective in taking the commercial to the customers. This study tries to understand the role played by usage of sound in making the audience like the commercial. A model is obtained from this study which can be used to do a cause and affect study to predict the response of the audience with increasing or decreasing the considered variables. It is understood from the study that sound in the form of different variables (Vocals, Music jingle, Background music etc.) play a more significant role in a TV commercial though the other variables cannot be ignored .Besides the most significant role played by the different variables of sound, the other variables considered for the study, Visualization and Storyboard also play a significant role which cannot be neglected in any given model.

Research Design The research is done at Pondicherry University by showing 10 TV commercials to the sample and asking them to rate the different variables. A sample of 60 of similar age group but belonging to different regions is asked to list 10 TV commercials they like along with their music jingle. Top 10 TV commercials are chosen by percentage analysis. The selected commercials are exhibited to a different sample of 200. The sampling method used in the study is convenience sampling. The sample is asked to rate the variables sound, vocals, background music, music jingle, story board and visualisation on a Likert scale of one to five, five being excellent and one is very bad. The selected variables are defined as follows

Sound: It can be any audible signal in the TV commercial other than the music and vocals. It could be a blowing horn, sound of a car engine etc.

Vocals: Sound of someone talking or singing in the TV commercial

Background music: The music that is played in the back ground of the TV commercial Music Jingle: The music bit with which the brand can be identified, usually played at the end of a TV commercial (may include vocals).

Story board: The story that runs through the commercial

Visualization: The creative visualization in the commercial like the splash of water in Limca commercial.

Literature review: Alpert, M., Alpert, J. AND Maltz, N. (2005), Music speaks to emotion. So we can say that music can be used for persuasion. Music has been used in stores, offices, and as a background in advertisements and has been reported to influence listeners emotions and behaviors. Music is a very useful tool for persuasion and exploring. Williamson, Judith (2000), A link is tried to make between product and music because advertisement can transfer the objects language to human language and can do opposite too. Sehultz, Don (1997), Elements and music used in an advertisement should be in a meaningful order to make an Unforgettable advertisement. Product image can be formed by right and correct used advertisement music so it can be remembered easily and you can see a rise at sale level. Music is an art branch. Also advertisement has art dimension. These two fields which needed creativity and study benefit each other. Akademik Baki identified six basic ways in which music can contribute to an effective broadcast advertisement: 1) entertainment, 2) structure/continuity, 3) memorability,4) lyrical language,5) targeting, and 6) authority establishment. Gerald J, Gorn Marvine, Goldberg Amitava Chattopadhyay and David (1991) says that the Products are highly complex, information provided via TV commercials might sufficiently tax the elderly's information processing capacities, so that their attitudes and choice processes might be adversely affected. Scott (1990) says that the examples of advertisements using music in a purposeful and artfully incongruous manner, including use of the musical device of

transition from tension to release. For example, an advertisement for a pain relief product used the resolution from musical dissonance to consonance as a metaphor for effective pain relief. Through cognitive resolution of the underlying purpose of the initially incongruous dissonance, music has functioned as a rhetorical device that complements verbal and visual communication regarding product benefits. Petty, R. E., and J. T. Cacioppo (1981) says that attractive visuals, music, etc., in an advertisement, though not directly related to Specific attributes of the product, may, nonetheless, influence brand attitude. Weilbacher (2003) through his research An advertisement any advertisement has a very difficult task if it is to capture the perception of a consumer and an even harder time, once perceived, to make a net addition to what the consumer already knows about the brand. In the TV advertising, the viewers focusing attention is presumed to be a prerequisite for the elaborative encoding necessary to integrate the commercials message with the viewers long-term knowledge store such that it might influence subsequent perceptions, feelings, thoughts and actions. The crucial challenge for advertising, and all sponsored marketing communications about brands, is what consumers can be made to learn about the brand that transcends its transactional qualities. Krugman D.M., Cameron G.T. & McKearney White C. (1995) found that attention during television viewing is very sensitive; both program and commercial viewing often take place among myriad other activities. Margarita Alexomanolaki, Catherine Loveday and Chris Kennett(2006) says music is effective in creating strong associations with the features of the advert, and facilitates implicit learning and recall. Music is essential in reinforcing the perception of the information of the commercial, without viewers conscious effort; there is also no requirement for particular musical skills for the viewer / consumer in order for the success of the music function to be guaranteed. Steve Oakes(2007) identifies effective musical communication in an advertising context may be dependent upon consumer prior exposure to comparable musical stimuli that has resulted in learning of the underlying cultural conventions and symbolic resonance of such stimuli. When incongruity is perceived in an advertising context, consumers are likely to assume there is a deliberately underlying communicative purpose for its presence. Chion M. (1994) says The audio effects were environmental sounds or ambient sounds that corresponded to the sceneries showed in the advert; for example, when there was a scene with two people by the beach, the audio was the sound of waves, which matched the scene, both semantically and formally, as if it were the natural sound during filming. Each version of the target stimulus was

presented within the advert break of the same episode of Friends in the same order and with the same distractor adverts. North, Hargreaves, MacKenzie and Law (2004) says that music composed specifically to be appropriate with an advertisement increased recall levels. Furnham, Bergland, and Gunter (2002) says recall would not be enhanced through an incongruous stimulus as it would not activate related constructs along network linkages. When incongruity is perceived in an advertising context, consumers are likely to assume there is a deliberately underlying communicative purpose for its presence. Hevner K (1935) finds that music not only enhances recall for a product or an ad through an evoked image, but it may evoke moods, feelings, emotions, and behaviors. Gorn, Goldberg, Chattopadhyay,and Litvack (1991) says High congruity between musical genre and product attributes enhanced recall of visual imagery from the advertisement. Gorn (1982) identifies that the peripheral influences such as background music used in commercials may become associated with the advertised product (in memory, even if not consciously) and influence product choice through classical conditioning. Mere exposure did not lead to liking, which apparently depended on whether the target product, a pen, was presented with liked versus disliked music. Maclnnis and Park (1991), high congruity between the advertisement's song lyrics and the message enhanced brand attitude with low and high advertising involvement. Kellaris, Cox, and Cox (1993) says high music-message congruity (matching evocation of images elicited by the music and the product) enhanced brand name and message recall with attention-gaining music. Olsen (1995) states congruous musical stimulus is likely to be integrated with other communicative elements of the advertisement; this underlines the effectiveness of using artfully incongruous music that demonstrates coherent integration with the advertising message. Mark I. Alpert, Judy I. Alpert, Elliot N. Maltz (2005), says that musical structure consists of elements such as sound, harmony, melody, and rhythm. Key factors in how these musical elements impact on the ad and the product are: 1) The consumer, through different levels of involvement and cognitive or affective processing, 2) The consumers subjective perception of the appropriateness of the music as it relates to the central idea of the ad and 3)The organization of musical elements. There has been interest in examining how musical elements influence affect and processing. David Allan (2008) says that music placement in advertising becomes an

economic boon in two ways: first, a commercials' use of music provides a new venue for collecting royalties, and second, the widespread and repeated exposure of commercials provides either for revival of or new interest in the particular songs and/or artists featuredwhich is music-sales promotion and very much a variation on the phenomenon of product placement. Popular music is more likely to be relevant to the advertisement narrative than the product or service. This suggests that popular music is being utilized by some advertisers to provide some type of relevance or perspective to the action in the advertisement for the consumer with the purpose of increasing the consumer's involvement in the commercial. Anand and Sternthal (1990) says there is significant differences in brand attitudinal responses to a soft drink advertisement using a spoken message compared to the same message sung with musical accompaniment. In contrast to the spoken version, the song displayed a positive, linear trend in terms of enhanced brand evaluation with repeated exposures. Griffitt and Guay, (1969) identifies that the association between mood states and affective responses, judgments, and behavior can be seen as both direct and indirect. A direct affective reaction may be viewed as a conditioned response when there are direct linkages in associations in memory between mood states and affective reactions and between mood states and behavior. Whereas Clark and Isen, (1982) identifies Indirect associations between feeling states and affective responses and/or behavior include the influence of information processing or cognitive activity. Mood may affect evaluations by evoking mood congruent thoughts and affect the performance of the behavior by increasing the accessibility of positive associations to the behavior. James J. Kellaris, Anthony D. Cox and Dena Cox (1993) says music is an increasingly prominent and expensive feature of broadcast ads, yet its effects on message reception are controversial. The message reception is influenced by the interplay of two musical properties: attention gaining value and music-message congruency. Increasing audience attention to music enhances message reception when the music evokes message-congruent (versus incongruent) thoughts. Kroeber-Riel, Werner (1979) says that the first musical property that can influence message reception is "attention-gaining value," which refers to the activation or arousal potential of musical sound. Music's ability to engage a listener's attention can stem from objective traits, such as speed and loudness, or subjective traits, such as surprisingness and interestingness. Macklin, M. Carole (1988) finds "An individual may attend to the music [and]

become so enraptured by [it] that the central message of the advertiser is ignored." She suggests that music is likely to have this distracting effect when it is "extraneous to the main concept or theme". Whether attention-gaining music enhances or distracts from processing may therefore depend on the consistency of meaning conveyed by the music and verbal message.

The study: statistical analysisStatistical Analysis: The study is conducted on a sample of 200. Students of age group 20 to 26 are selected. 10 TV commercials are exhibited to the sample members who rated the different variables in the commercials apart from giving overall rating. The different variables of the study are assumed as v1=Vocals, v2=Sound, v3=Background music, v4=Music jingle, v5=Story board,

v6=Visualization and R= overall rate

Table 1 Brand Amul Britania Bru Dairymilk Docomo Hero Honda Mountain Dew Nirma Raymond Vodafone

Commercials exhibited

Name of the Commercial Zarasi Hasi Zindagi mein life Sneha In Home Romance Friendship Express Desh ki dhadkat Water Sport Ambulance Son in law Borrow

Categorical Regression has been applied to find the effect of the 6 variables i.e., Vocals, Sound, Background Music, Music Jingle, Story Board, Visualization considered in the study on overall rate. The regression equations and the values obtained are given below for each advertisement separately and overall regression equation has also been estimated. An overall assessment The Hypothesis: H0 = The model for TV commercial is not significant H1= The model for TV commercial is significant Table - 2 Multiple R 0.846 R Square 0.717 Adjusted R Square 0.713 F - Value 33.516 (0.000*)

The correlation between overall rate and the independent variables is 0.846. The adjusted R square value is 0.713 indicating that the variation in the overall rate is explained by the independent variables up to 71.3%. The obtained F value (sig.) is 33.561 (0.000*) showing that the null hypothesis is rejected and thus the model obtained is significant. The regression model is

S = 0.146v1 + 0.163v2 + 0.190v3 + 0.162v4 + 0.226v5 + 0.228v6

The variables are divided into two components in the factor analysis as sound and visuals in two cases (Amul & Britannia). In these two cases, the percentage of variance explained by the variables of sound is more than that of the remaining two variables which tells that sound is more significant in those commercials. In the rest of the cases, only one component is extracted from the variables which mean that all the variables are highly correlated.

Categorical Regression has been applied to find the effect of the 6 variables considered in the study on overall rate. The regression equations and the values obtained are given below for each advertisement separately and overall regression equation has also been estimated. The regression equations are obtained as follows

S amul = 0.485v1 + 0.085v2 + 0.143v3 + 0.076v4 + 0.151v5 + 0.319v6 S Britannia = 0.165v1 + 0.245v2 + 0.139v3 + 0.251v4 + 0.153v5 + 0.217v6 S Bru = 0.082v1 + 0.195v2 + 0.051v3 + 0.336v4 + 0.370v5 + 0.173v6 S Dairy milk = 0.260v1 + 0.137v2 + 0.258v3 + 0.054v4 + 0.235v5 + 0.214v6 S Docomo = 0.102v1 + 0.237v2 + 0.210v3 + 0.139v4 + 0.242v5 + 0.208v6 S Hero Honda = 0.199v1 + 0.094v2 + 0.213v3 + 0.114v4 + 0.195v5 + 0.331v6 S Dew = - 0.003v2 + 0.003v3 + 0.000v4 + 0.002v5 + 0.999v6 S Nirma = 0.668v1 + 0.070v2 + 0.065v3 - 0.002v4 + 0.196v5 + 0.004v6 S Raymond = 0.001v1 + 0.001v2 + 0.000v3 + 0.001v4 + 0.069v5 + 0.930v6 S Vodafone = 0.223v1 + 0.061v2 + 0.274v3 + 0.193v4 + 0.246v5 + 0.182v6

The percentage of variance explained for the brands by the selected variables in the exhibited TV commercials is as shown.

Conclusion: This study concludes that there exists high correlation between the different variables of sound and vocal rating of a TV commercial since the hypothesis that sound in its different forms(vocal, background music, music jingle) do not have any significance in a TV commercial. Music composed specifically to be appropriate with an advertisement increased recall levels. The variance explained by the factor analysis is around 60 per cent (approx.) in most of the cases which means the selected variables have their effect on the overall rating of the TV commercial up to 60 per cent. Close observation of the communalities tables of the individual commercials suggest that more than half of variance is explained by the variables of sound which means that sound is more responsible in taking TV commercial to the customers.