If you didn’t see the latest episode of Alan Yentob’s arts documentary series IMAGINE on the BBC last night please go and check it out on the BBC iPlayer (click the image below). Yentob’s fascinating documentary was based on real case studies from Dr. Oliver Sacks excellent book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Sacks is neurologist, and if you don’t know his books you may know the movie Awakenings, which featured Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams playing Sacks.

Sacks had some fascinating ideas about the power of music, but just three of the points made in the programme are worth remembering…

Music occupies more areas of the brain than language does, humans are a musical species.

Music can move to the heights and from the depths of emotion. It’s often what we turn to in moments of joy and despair.

For virtually all of us music has great power…this propensity for music shows itself in infancy…and probably goes back to the very beginning of our species.

citizensound says:

If the power of music is so ingrained in all of us, then why aren’t more brands constantly harnessing this power? Is it simply because marketing has been defined merely in visual terms, thus denying the immense value that sound (and the other senses) can play in brand engagement?