Popular Music in TV Advertising

This thesis examines the importance of music and popular music in television advertising with the aim of updating our overall understanding. The research takes a three-stage approach in order to firstly find out the current use of popular music in TV advertising, secondly the attitudes of advertising experts towards popular music in TV advertising and finally the ability of popular music to influence consumer perceptions of brand personality in television commercials. A content analysis of TV commercials in Austria forms part one of the study. A survey was sent to advertising agencies in Austria and Germany in part two to identify the opinions of experts towards the use of music in television commercials. Part three uses Aaker's Brand Personality Scale to identify the ability of popular music to influence consumer perceptions towards brand personality. The results show that while music is widely used in advertising today, only a minority of adverts use popular music. Agency respondents reveal that while music is very important for them, popular music is considered a nice to have , but not a need to have . The final part identifies an ability for popular music to influence perceptions of brand personality, as consumers perceived the brand personality of the same commercial differently upon accompaniment of three different musical pieces.