SoundOut: Aldi ad music is UK Christmas number one
SoundOut, a leader in sonic branding testing, has revealed its Christmas advert music league table for 2022, with discount supermarket chain Aldi pipping competitor Lidl to top spot. John Lewis, often praised for the quality of its Christmas adverts, failed to make the top 10.
The rankings of 24 Christmas ad soundtracks in the UK were determined by SoundOut based on how well they matched the parent brand’s personality along with their emotional impact across 200 brand attributes.
David Courtier-Dutton, CEO at SoundOut, says, “While some brands may decide to go for a full-on sales activation approach, smart brands use the emotional power of Christmas, and one of the largest annual campaign budgets, to drive long term emotional empathy with the brand itself. This ‘look at me, I really care’ or ‘you can always trust me to throw a great party’ may or may not be a better way of shifting mince pies next week, but it is one rooted in long term brand building, which as every marketeer knows, is the secret to long term sales uplift.”
Based on SoundOut’s analysis, Aldi’s advert soundtrack scored an impressive 90% match to the brand, with consumers describing it as ‘fun’, ‘alive’ and ‘amazing’. Elsewhere, Lidl’s soundtrack recorded an 84% match, earning the brand second place in this year’s music league table. Like Aldi, Lidl’s advert revolved around rebel/hero archetype perspective, evoking attributes of ‘contemporary’, innovative’, ‘alive’ and ‘cheerful’, according to SoundOut’s consumer data set.
Courtier-Dutton adds, “For brands taking this [long term] approach it is essential to be authentic. This authenticity needs to come from the heart (or appear to) and one of the most powerful ways to tie the emotion of the campaign with the brand itself is through music. Music that simultaneously captures the empathetic emotions of the storyline and the core brand personality is the best way of creating genuine long term rapport with consumers. This is because music is the hod-carrier of emotional bricks, acting deep on the consumer subconscious while the story unfolds.”
Other top performing brands include TK Maxx and Paddy Power (83% respectively), JD Sports and Disney (81% respectively) and Coca-Cola (80%). John Lewis, however, failed to make the table’s top 10, finishing in 13th place and only obtaining a brand match of 68%. Unable to replicate the success of fellow supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl, Morrisons slumped to bottom place, with a dismal 23% brand match.
