ESSENTIAL CLUBS, BARS, RESTAURANTS AND GYMS
SENSES WORKING OVERTIME! Building business by creating delightful and immersive experiences through the use of sound. Graeme Harrison – VP and General Manager, Bluesound Professional explains. As we move out of the pandemic, businesses of all types are trying to work out how to bring customers back into brick and mortar establishments. During the last two years, we have all got used to doing things online from the safety and comfort of our own home, including ordering goods and meals. During this period, we have also adapted to working from home and we now question the need to go back into offices. These three trends: online shopping, food delivery services, and teleworking were all in existence pre-pandemic, but during this period, their growth has been accelerated. So, the big question is just ‘how do we encourage people back into public spaces?’ There is growing evidence that the best way to entice people out, is by creating surprise and delight, immersive experiences that are difficult, or impossible, to achieve at home. The key to creating such experiences is by activating as many of our senses as possible. The problem is that of our five senses, three of them - smell, taste and touch, have been seen as dangerous during the pandemic. This leaves only the sense of sight and the sense of sound that could be considered safe. The positive side of this is that
48 OCTOBER 2022
our industry focuses on these two senses - we are the audio-visual industry - so we are uniquely positioned to provide experiences based on these two senses alone. Businesses throughout time have generally focused on just one of these senses, the sense of sight. Almost all companies have a visual logo, but very few companies are known for having audio logos, only Intel and T-Mobile come to mind. After all, both architects and interior designers think with their eyes not their ears. Studies have shown combining a congruent audio stimulus with an existing visual stimulus increases its effectiveness by 12 times. Equally, an incongruent audio and visual stimulus reduces effectiveness to only 14% of that of either the audio or the visual stimulus alone1. As the visual side of this equation is well established, the easiest way of amplifying the experience is by focusing on the audio side of the equation. At Bluesound Professional, we call this providing a strategic atmosphere, the process of building the sound side of the experience out thoughtfully and appropriately. We manufacture the world’s first and so far only range of streaming audio hardware
specifically designed for use in commercial installations. The timing of this is especially pertinent as it coincides with the development of streaming business music services. It is not commonly known that the use of residential streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon, or Apple music, is illegal in commercial spaces, even if the business has the relevant performing rights organisation licences. There is no legal way to play one of these residential streaming services in a business.
/Essentialinstall
@Install_mag
essentialinstall.com
