The Loudness War

It's always a joy to find people who are able to explain inherently complex matter in a clear and simple way. The past few years there's been lots of talk on 'overproducing' and 'overcompressing' music, and you often hear sound afficionados mumble about the loss of range in modern music productions. This short video explains everything:

There is kind of a similar thing happening in marketing and advertising today. Brands are trying to shout at the top of their lungs in the same channels, repeating the same message with the same colours and the same sounds, losing the subtle touches that are often needed to become more than a onedimensional promotional idea.

That's actually the way the basic media approach worked: turn it up in all frequencies in order to get a maximum of reach. And that's precisely the reason why planners should be more involved in the media planning process: on the lookout for those frequencies and areas where it might be more interesting to approach people from a different, potentially more subtle, angle. As the video rightly states: you need silence to be able to hear a sound.