Inclusive advertising through the soundtrack: Insights from people with tinnitus

ABSTRACT

This study explores the question of inclusive advertising soundtracks for people with tinnitus, a group that until now has been largely ignored by the marketing industry. The research applies a methodology based on Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) and combines grounded theory and the focus group model as a data collection technique. The study took an objectivist approach for the first stages of data coding, and a constructivist approach to develop the theory, in an effort to tell a story about people with tinnitus and their relationship with today’s audiovisual advertising. A comparison of the contributions of three focus groups of tinnitus sufferers reveals a specific pattern that may provide clues for the creation of inclusive ads that will be tolerable to this target. The participants agree that they need clear and simple sound that poses fewer interpretation problems for the brain, and that advertising messages can be made more receptive and persuasive for them by improving the audio, through high-quality equalization. As a strategy to facilitate understanding of the advertising message, tinnitus sufferers suggest that ads should make what is heard visible, establishing the diegetic relationship between image and sound.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive marketing
• tinnitus
• hearing disorders
• advertising soundtrack
• accessible advertising

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who selflessly participated in the focus groups.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There are few films featuring characters with tinnitus. In addition to A Star is Born (2018 version), movies such as Cop Land (1997) and Baby Driver (2017) also include tinnitus suffers in leading roles, normalizing the condition and showing how real the struggle is (Michel 2019).

2. 72% of adults in the UK think companies and organizations should subtitle all their advertisements, according to a study commissioned in 2021 by the newly launched subtitling company SubText Digital. Unsurprisingly, accessibility due to deafness or hearing loss is a key reason, but interestingly, younger people are much more likely to use subtitles regularly than the 55+ category (Marketing Communication News 2021).

3. For people with hearing impairment, the more diegetic the audiovisual piece is – i.e., the sound we hear is made visible in the image, as we see what or who is doing it (Michel 1994)—the more likely they are to understand the advertisement, and to continue watching rather than getting distracted and giving up on it. Diegetism was rated on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: Level 5: visible music/singers in the image, visible announcer, visible sound effects, visible actors; Level 4: visible narrator, visible sound effects, visible actors; Level 3: visible sound effects, visible actors; Level 2: visible actors; Level 1: entirely extradiegetic; nothing that is heard is seen.

4. The eight ads were chosen from three international advertising databases: International Advertising & Design Database, adForum, and GlobalData. The selection criteria were: recent advertisements (produced in the 21st century), each one with different levels of diegetism and sound features, without any brand preference but with an interesting/fun intercultural storytelling that could help make the focus group discussion more dynamic.