The Sound of music or the history of Trump and Clinton family singers: music branding as communication strategy in 2016 presidential campaign

Abstract

Sound branding has been eventually used to recognize the brand and associated with certain values. Despite being a powerful branding resource, especially in political campaigns, music is still underrated in both practitioners’ and researchers’ fields of action. The objective of this study is to analyze the potential of music to conduct a political branding strategy by itself. Six campaign ads from the 2016 U.S. elections are analyzed acoustically and semiotically to gain insights on the music-branding significance. The results suggest that both Clinton and Trump campaigns used music strategically to communicate values in the emotional arena. In particular, Trump’s music conducted brand associations and personality strategy based on the construction of a war hero taking action to save his homeland in times of crisis. Music can transmit brand values through interactions based on emotional experiences. The connections stablished in this article between music and branding can be taken as a model for practitioners to design future political strategies and researches to test brand constructs within the music-branding framework.