INTRODUCTION

This work focuses on the study of sound and music in audiovisual advertising in the field of advertising. For this, a multimodal view is applied that allows establishing relationships between image, sound, and the communicative intentions of an advertising brand. In this case, the study focuses on an IKEA campaign. To analyze the advertising mechanisms, one can start from the Multimodal Theory, which is based on the fact that communication occurs simultaneously and integrated through different channels or modes of meaning (text, images, graphics, design, sound, music, gesture, speech, soundtrack, 3D, etc.) (O'Halloran, 2008).

In this way, advertising, understood as a transmitter of a brand image, way of life, and values, will acquire all its meaning, will present a new way of relating to the public (Cluley & Nixon, 2019), a change that will permeate the entire discourse: arguments, texts, sounds, music, characters, ages, genders, colors, landscapes, etc. It is an interdisciplinary story that will in turn strengthen the brand message and where music and sound will have a notable influence. Advertising seeks effectiveness in its expressions, so an analysis that includes sound and psychosocial dimensions could indicate which are the best resources to support future campaigns. These include emotional content to strengthen the brand image. Some seek to delve into this emotional dimension (Nardone & Salvini, 2006) to retain consumers through aesthetic identification processes, proposing, in many cases, sensory references (Porras, 2013).

Television advertising uses music in more than 97% of advertisements (Sedeño, 2011). In their soundtracks, certain common tendencies are appreciated: silences as separators between scenes; intensity changes to avoid saturation or loss of intelligibility of voices; stereotypical use of some musical instruments; widespread use of consonant chords and major mode; dissonances to attract attention or signal conflict; contextualizing, descriptive, and realistic noises; male or female spoken voices, according to the target, productive sector, or consumption context; traditional music and instruments with a marked cultural bias; musical styles and genres depending on the sociodemographic characteristics of the target audience, etc. (Gustems, 2005). In this sense, it cannot be ignored that advertising takes advantage of the flexible relationship between signified and signifier that sound provides, so that the issuer decides in what percentage the sound event is more or less natural (iconic) and more or less arbitrary (symbolic) (Bravo & A, 1998).

In audiovisuals, thanks to the experience of an attentive immersion with certain isolation, inducing intense and intimate emotions (Leeuwen, 2017), the different emotional reactions give rise to neurophysiological, behavioral, and cognitive-verbal responses typical of each emotion. Such responses can be characterized according to two main dimensions: the so-called “valence” (feeling of well-being/discomfort) and arousal (relaxation/activation) (Russell, 1980). These two parameters are combined causing 4 major emotional poles: calm (well-being with little activation), enthusiasm (well-being with a lot of activation), sadness (discomfort with little activation), and anger (discomfort with a lot of activation) (Diener & Emmons, 1984) (see Figure 1). The emotions that the ads arouse in the viewers will be framed by the well-being and excitement that they make us feel, and how these factors are combined.

Source: The authors, adapted from Russell (1980).

The object chosen for this research focuses on the emotions of Christmas and how a brand can use emphasizing music and sound for its commercial purposes. Christmas is a peak of emotions due to the closeness of loved ones, the memory of the year that is about to end, traditions of each culture that make this time special, symbolism that, on many occasions, also has a consumer orientation that Christmas advertising takes care of conveying.

The Christmas announcements are dressed in good conduct, refined manners, accompanied by classical or traditional music, combining joy and nostalgia through scenes of family encounters, trips back home, meetings in closed spaces, where the atmosphere created by the lights, furniture, and design is key to comfort and warmth. This context is optimal for brands like IKEA to be present so that their brand is associated with the emotions of this context and their brand image is reinforced.

In 2018, IKEA presented an ad in Spanish (Familiarizados) specially designed for the virtual world and social networks, on which this work will focus. IKEA urged viewers to reflect on their behavior around mobile phones and social media. Moreover, it opted for a brave alternative through the gesture of disconnecting from the digital world to reconnect with the real world, proposed to interrupt the activity on social networks during the central period of Christmas, and proposed in the ad that its protagonists also do so, during a while. This was the fundamental message of the ad, a brand reinforcement campaign rather than of product sales, moving away from other conventional furniture ads which advertise a product and provoke the desire for its purchase among consumers (Norton, Mochon, & Ariely, 2012). In this, apparently, nothing was announced. However, it appealed to something that in advertising is essential: the feeling of identification with what is happening in the ad as a reinforcement of our own emotions (Park & ​​Lee, 2014). In this case, the collective awareness that social networks invade our lives replacing our own reality.

This form of advertising in which the story replaces the product has been studied by researchers such as C Coker, Flight, and Baima (2021), who demonstrated that the ad that narrated hooked viewers more than the argumentative one. This format was also more shared and remembered. Similar conclusions, but in radio format, were obtained by K Kang, Hong, and Hubbard (2020), who emphasized the emotional impact that stories told in advertising (for example, about the founder of a brand) had on viewers. In this way, we enter the so-called storytelling (Yang & Kang, 2021). Through ads distributed through social networks, in story format loaded with feelings in which viewers are reflected, the advertiser intends to create a brand image that becomes something more than that “simple brand” and becomes a way of being (Yılmaz & Enginkaya, 2015), something that identifies the user and that, therefore, makes it a true emissary of this brand (Roberts, 2005). Not surprisingly, social networks are loaded with personal stories, so the stories offered by the different advertising agencies are mixed with those that users share, making the expression of "prosumers" even more meaningful.

Regarding IKEA, although it was founded in 1943, it seeks the co-creation of value as a business strategy (Edvardsson, Enquist, & Hay, 2006), an innovation that allows the customer to share part of the transport and assembly of the furniture, and the corresponding savings. Changes in the consumption and meaning of its products have evolved together with IKEA, through concepts such as “lifestyle” or “choice” (Machin & Leeuwen, 2007).

The design of space and furniture can communicate ideas and clear messages about the identities and social relationships to represent and value (Aiello & Dickinson, 2014). This presents a social semiotic approach whereby IKEA would also align itself with ideas and values ​​such as "flexibility", "dynamism" "solution", "creativity", or "self-management" (Ledin & Machin, 2018). Other social elements associated with the receiver would have to do with identification with the characters and actors, their sincerity, the empathy generated, their different genders and ages, etc. In this way, most viewers can identify with a character. This empathy established between the advertiser and the potential consumer has been shown to be key in previous advertising campaigns (Ribeiro-Cardoso, Vieira, & Serra, 2019). To achieve these social implications, the ad format is reminiscent of other television contests, with an interior set and cameras that capture all angles. Next to these tables, there is a space for sincere reflection directed to the viewer (like “confessionals” of some television programs), which would imply the adoption of new roles, responsibilities, beliefs, and norms for themselves and others.

Thus, IKEA would do things "with" customers and not just "for" customers (Gummesson, Kuusela, & Närvänen, 2014), an approach that will require new marketing, more focused on stakeholders.

OBJECTIVES

With all this information, we ask ourselves to what extent IKEA is effectively using the power of sound (music, voices, and noise) in its audiovisual advertising. The objective of this study was to analyze the role of audio in the psychosocial and emotional characterization that emerges from the IKEA ad Familiarizados (2018), through a multimodal analysis.

METHODOLOGY

This work is descriptive-analytical, combining quantitative and qualitative data, with a prospective and exploratory intention. To do this, the Familiarizados (IKEA, Christmas 2018) ad, created in the McCann agency, in its three-minute-long version, has been analyzed.

The analysis was carried out by 86 students (37 women and 49 men) of the first semester of the Cinematography degree of the ESCAC (Escuela Superior de Cinema y Audiovisuales de Cataluña) aged between 18 and 22 years (A=19.4; SD=0.8). These students have not yet taken any subject of film analysis, only sound analysis.

For this analysis, multimodality was chosen as the study model, and for this, we started from the initial proposals byHalliday (1978) and the later ones by KKress and Leeuwen (2001) to build an ad hoc multimodal file (Table 1), which included a discursive level, another of a social nature (distinguishing between issuer and receiver), and a last, much more detailed level, where the characteristic sound elements of the product were described and included. At the textual level, only the sound elements are presented, which are the ones we want to analyze in this work.

Source: The authors, adapted from Halliday and Kress and van Leuwen (2001).

On the other hand, and to analyze the provoked emotions, a measurement instrument inspired by the 2DES (Two-Dimensional Emotion Space) and the Emotion Space Labe (Schubert, 1999) was used. Each student pointed to a point on a sheet with two cross-shaped coordinate axes, which collected the valence (vertical axis) and arousal (horizontal axis) perceived at the end of the ad (see Figure 2).

Source : The authors.

Each marked point was given a value of two coordinates so that the point (0,0) would correspond to the point of minimum activation and maximum discomfort, the point (5,5) would be the center of the cross, and the point (10,10) would correspond to the one with maximum activation and maximum well-being. The four extremes of the square would correspond respectively to: sadness (0,0), anger (10,0), enthusiasm (10,10), and calmness (0,10). All the points indicate an emotion following the scheme proposed by Russell (1980).

The multimodal analysis sheet was answered by all the participants in a single session using seven collective visualizations. The results were collated by two specialists in sound and multimodal analysis.

Likewise, the participants answered the 2DES model and, lastly, to obtain information about the involved sound stimuli, they were asked to say the three sound elements present in the ad, and in their opinion, responsible for their emotional assessment.

With all the data collected, an anonymous file was prepared that included participants’ gender, perceived valence and arousal, and the three sound elements that they considered most relevant in their emotion. All the results obtained were reflected in a collective multimodal file that collected data of an emotional nature, together with data from sound, discursive, and social sources.

RESULTS

In the first place, it is worth highlighting the format and duration of the ad, which featured three differentiated parts of one minute each, which coincided with the three classic parts of plays (presentation, middle, and end).

At the discursive level, the topic of the ad points to a paradox: the little knowledge we have of people in our family environment compared to how much we know of people outside of us, such as the protagonists of social networks.

On a social level, the ad places the viewer in a television contest that simulates a Christmas dinner, with several current middle-class Spanish families. There is no salesperson, no call to buy any product, but the commercial interest is replaced by human relationships and family values ​​of Christmas. Each of the family groups in the ad is made up of about eight people of various generations, genders, ages, and personal situations, albeit with a bias towards the typical IKEA customer group (youth and young adults), and a smaller presence of the elderly compared to the proportion in our current society. In this sense, it should be noted that the concept of "family" is slightly expanded by including several generations on the same table, which, however, is still common on the dates on which the advertisement is represented.

Regarding the social connotations, in the different tables, we find decorations of some shows with a large audience. The very structure of the show is reminiscent of current contests.

Regarding the music of the audiovisual piece, there are two very different parts: the beginning with an electronic style followed by piano music by the impressionist composer Claude A. Debussy, whose centenary of his death (1918) was celebrated that same year.

Regarding the music of the first part of the ad, it is worth highlighting the use of synthesizers with electronic sounds to set the mood for the contest, incidental music without melodic designs or incisions, except for a nod to the piano piece that will follow. This is a descending 3^rd minor interval that is heard in the first seconds, typical of the cuckoo song and that will appear at the beginning of Claire de Lune, the piece that will accompany most of the ad. This Debussy music occupies most of the ad (118 seconds out of 184 total, about 2/3 approximately), the one destined to revelations and sincerity with greater emotional content.

The choice of the piano as an exquisite, powerful, complex, and, at the same time, clear instrument, typical of upper social classes, played like a harp or lute, taking advantage of the resonance pedal, the minor mode, almost sad... the birds that sing (like the cuckoo…) paint a scene of nature and nocturnality, where the inner world is pursued through the use of resonance, as an enveloping subjectivism, with clear romantic overtones.

However, the original music has been adapted so that it can be easily assembled into the ad script: elimination of the first eight measures, creation of an arpeggio-based bridge after measure 22, repetition in a high octave of measures 9 to 11, continuation in measure 25 to 31, and final with measures 35 and 36 abruptly cut off, giving the impression that an end has not been reached but that the story continues, just like the lives of the characters.

At the semiotic level, we could speak of different levels of reading that would allow a different approach to the viewer who does not know the piece, who knows the piece but has not seen the films, and who has seen part-totality of the films.

Regarding the global emotion provoked in the receiver at the end of the ad, the most consensual was sadness, followed by nervousness (in men), although statistical differences according to gender were not appreciated (see Table 2).

Source: The authors.

Regarding the main sound elements that provoked and were responsible for these emotions, the participants indicated those shown in Table 3.

Source: The authors.

Other social elements associated with the receiver, according to the participants, would have to do with the identification achieved with the characters and actors, the sincerity with which they express themselves, looking at the camera, sobbing, with voices about to break, the empathy generated, the fact that there are characters of different genders and ages, etc.

Regarding the voices, we have those of the actors and the voice of the speaker of the contest, acousmatic, incorporeal but intradiegetic. Regarding the actors, it should be noted that they are not known, so their voices would represent even better any Spanish family. In the first and second parts of the ad (minutes 0 to 2), the voices of men and women appear the same amount, although with a small bias regarding young people (65% compared to 35%). In the third and last part of the ad, on the other hand, many more women are heard (and seen) than men (80% versus 20%), a figure that coincides with an emphasis on emotional expression in the script. Furthermore, in this 3^rd part, the characters that appear go from older to younger, ending with the youngest, specifically a girl who is in charge of giving the message of the ad.

Regarding the voice of the speaker, he is a well-known actor in the Spanish cinematographic field, both in his role as an interpreter and in dubbing. He is a young, dynamic actor with a baritone tessitura, common in intradiegetic voices in competitions. Also, reverb treatment of this voice is important.

Another very important element is the use of a marked decrease in intensity and rhythm of almost 10 seconds as a separator between scenes (parts 1 and 2) and that, in turn, poses a topic and emotional change.

The rest of the sound elements (noises, clapping hands, murmurs, etc.) are descriptive contextual elements of the situation, without narrative content, beyond confirming the images.

DISCUSSION

Regarding the format and duration, as reflected, it differs from traditional television advertising. The division into three parts and the extension are far from the usual between 10 and 120 seconds (Escribano, Fuentes, & Alcaraz, 2006). Thus, the analyzed audiovisual would be closer to storytelling than to traditional television spots. In this way, with longer ads, the brand can draw on the viewers' feelings with developed stories (Yang & Kang, 2021).

At the discursive level, the paradox it presents aims to provoke in the viewer a reflection towards the people who are really important to us: family, abandoning contact with social networks for a short time through the symbolic act of keeping the cell phones inside a box. This paradox shows the possible abuse and even addiction to social networks of many people in our society (Isidro & Moreno, 2018).

Regarding the music, the electronic style of the first part emulates current television competitions (Nowak, 2018) followed by an adaptation of Debussy's Claire de Lune. This piece is an adaptation of the 3^rd movement of Debussy's famous Suite Bergamasque, published in 1905 and inspired by a Verlaine poem of the same title. The piece is known enough to give it a certain sophistication, although it is unknown enough not to be subject to too many memories or pre-existing connections (Griffiths & Reay, 2018). The fact of being written in an impressionist style can affect the listener through somewhat undefined elements, an effective emotional impression, although diffuse, difficult to explain and delimit (Strobel, 1990).

This piece by Debussy, considered a work of repertoire (Alcalde, 2007), has been used in emblematic cinematographic works of very diverse consideration, which gives it added value as a reminder and magnet. Among the most prominent we have: Seven Years in Tibet (J.J. Annaud, 1997), with Brat Pitt, where a fragment of the piece is heard in a music box; Dog Soldiers (N. Marshall, 2002), British horror film; Man on Fire (T. Scott, 2004), a fast-paced thriller starring Denzel Washington; Eclipse (D. Slade, 2010), from The Twilight Saga; Ocean’s Eleven (S. Soderbergh, 2001) and Ocean’s Thirteen (S. Soderbergh, 2007); Hannibal (R. Scott, 2001), with an impressive Anthony Hopkins; the series The Blacklist (2016); and in the world of animation, Phineas and Ferb (2013), and The Simpsons in the episodes He loves to fly and He D’ohs.

Beyond sadness, this music has been associated with simplicity, the children's world, the singing of the cuckoo, Christmas, intense emotions, terror, and even humor and satire. A brief reading of Verlaine's poem, written in 1869, which inspires the work, places us in front of certain concepts that generate serene impressions, magnificently drawn in Debussy's work:

Votre âme est un paysage choisi que vont charmant masques et bergamasques jouant du luth et dansant et quasi tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur l'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune. Au calme clair de lune triste et beau, qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

The use of pre-existing music in advertisements is a constant in television advertising, asPalencia-Lefler (2010) warns us in his study, stating that 50% of such music was pre-existing music, being, however, more common the use of popular urban music as part of those repertoire music. However, the use of this work in the films mentioned above makes this piece attractive to listeners, as they give it certain traits of familiarity (North & Hargreaves, 1995). In this sense, the use of pre-existing music in audiovisuals (Alcalde, 2007) brings new readings and meanings to the image, although the appeal is specific to the piece and not to its relationship with other “texts”.

As has been described, the majority feeling was sadness, an emotion that leads to recollection, reflection, and certain inaction, being one of the experiences of Christmas, despite frequent family events. In some cases, extreme sadness can even induce suicide (González-Abarca, et al., 2014), something that unfortunately grows during the Christmas holidays (Hernández, 2018). That component of sadness, according to Bruner (1990), is what most encourages the consumption of products. Sadness is an emotion expressed in the arts, preferably through cinema, music, and literature, according to research data by C Calderón, Gustems, Martín, Fuentes, and Portela (2020), so it is familiar to the audience. No differences are noted regarding gender, confirming previous studies in which it is assumed that men and women, despite their neurological differences, perceive similarly most of the arts and emotions that they arouse (Fedrizzi, 2012), thus refuting some social stigmas and prejudices related to gender stereotypes in emotional perception. In this case, the sadness is reinforced by a certain feeling of guilt that the viewer may feel when identifying with the protagonists of the advertisement and verifying that, like these, it is more common to know data about the lives of celebrities through social networks than our own relatives.

As has been observed, besides the music, the participants highlighted voices, silences, and noises as responsible for the emotional impact on the ad, beyond the explicit content. Furthermore, the characteristics of music involved in emotions are in line with the results ofJuslin and Sloboda (2001) and the meta-analysis of L Livinsgton and Thompson (2006), associating it with elements such as complexity, pitch, mode, and tempo.

Regarding the identification with the protagonists, the vast majority of viewers could feel identified with some of the characters who, globally, agree with the topic and situation. This empathy that is established between the advertiser and the potential consumer has been shown to be key in previous advertising campaigns (Ribeiro-Cardoso et al., 2019).

Regarding the voice of the speaker, the use of a deep voice gives it a certain power of safety, serenity, and justice granted to this tessitura, as some studies confirm that low voices are preferably used to convey serenity, temperance, and certain longing (Melgar, 2019). The use of reverberation in this voice can generate a certain sense of transcendence, increased by the fact that it coincides with various zenith shots and its thematic relationship with Christmas. The association of resonance with transcendent intentions and rituals is documented from rock art (Díaz-Andreu & Benito, 2013) and, in this case, we can suggest that it would keep a certain symbolism with consciousness.

On the other hand, the marked decrease in intensity and rhythm before the second part and the contrast that it provokes (perhaps with the “silence effect”) also prepares –as the silences did in the religious rituals of ancient Romans– for contact with divinity so that the 2^nd part of the ad is raised from a much more transcendent positioning. This silence, as described by Chion (1993), does not function as a void, but rather as a negative of the sound, thus accentuating the function of contrast. Besides, it is very common in contests, increasing the suspense over the question and the possible failure/success of the person to whom it is addressed. This is helped by the counter planes of the people and, in turn, contributes to the creation of the paradox.

CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed to analyze the role of sound in the psychosocial and emotional characterization of the IKEA Familiarizados (2018) ad through a multimodal analysis. In the analyzed advertisement, many coincidences have been observed that emphasize the symbolic meaning of the sounds used, aimed at pursuing an emotion, a certain sadness underpinned by the guilt reflected in the script of the ad, which delves into family values, especially during Christmas.

For IKEA, marketing implies, among others, emphasizing the customer's perception of value creation, which is also reflected in corporate culture and values ​​ (Edvardsson et al., 2006). Traditional advertising seeks to move the public towards the acquisition of products but in this ad, apparently, nothing is announced, as it is a communication about the brand, simply spending more time with family and doing without social networks at Christmas, alluding only to values ​​and not consumption. However, this brand achieved the opposite with this ad: on November 29^th, 2018, when it was published on the Internet, it received 6 million views on the same day and almost 11 million during the first weeks. This phenomenon in which advertising goes viral in a media ecosystem is deeply addressed by Dafonte-Gomez and Martinez-Rolan (2016), giving the viewer an essential role in the diffusion of the ad.

The type of affective naturalism that we have found in this analysis, becomes part of how IKEA redesigns its stores, catalogs, or advertisements, proposing a playful consumption that permeates a new way of current life, work, leisure, and home. Only brands that attend to the mind and heart will establish an empathetic and solid relationship with the consumer, especially those that link the brand's memories directly with the most visceral emotions, such as happiness or sadness (Rúas & García, 2018). This new symbolic use commits us affectively in the remodeling of social relations, establishing a new mercantile order based on affectivity and apparent functional simplicity (Ledin & Machin, 2018).

Faith moves mountains, although it needs a story with credible meaning to sustain it, a discourse capable of combining senses, reason, emotion, and imagination, which allows the construction of new myths, forms of communication, and the need to believe in ideas or brands (Rúas and Garcia, 2018). A faith centered on women, whose greatest presence in the last part of the ad, the most reflective, testimonial, and emotional, becomes fundamental as a strategy for the visibility of women, IKEA's target audience. Despite the weight and presence of the speaker's male voice, even in the two children, she is the one speaking, assuming a more active role.

The data obtained in this work confirm the influence of music and sound in the characterization of a commercial brand, in our case, IKEA, and how the emotions aroused in a spot are sustained by the sound stimuli that appear in it. For this reason, the need to take music and sound into high consideration as elements of brand identity is reinforced.

Although the results obtained are quite clarifying, some limitations of the study must be taken into account, such as that the sample of participants has been very homogeneous, focused on young students of the cinematography degree, which may cause a certain bias regarding the general audience to whom this audiovisual is directed.

REFERENCES