Tourism & music; who’s doing it best?
As the world tentatively starts opening up, we take a look at how travel and tourism brands can use sound to create the right tone.
While holidays abroad this year are still a contentious question, travel and tourism adverts are using different creative solutions to transport us to places we’re not yet able to visit in person – with the most prominent solution being sound.
Travel and music are beautifully interconnected and interwoven, with music often providing feelings that can perfectly accompany, enrich and support a travel experience, provide cultural context to a location, or provide comfort and depth to a long journey.
Feel the rhythm of Korea
This fabulously uplifting song and video combines traditional Korean Pansori, a genre of musical storytelling, with contemporary hip hop beats. Bursting with energy and excitement, the striking video shows a modern twist on traditional dance routines and costumes in the country’s top tourist spots.
The video became a viral sensation, bringing a glimpse of optimism and fun during lockdown, reaching 75 million views on YouTube alone in two months, and more than 260 million views across other social media platforms. Previously, Korean celebrities and traditional foods were the usual candidates to be shown in this type of tourism promotional video, but this bold and unusual creation has created a much bigger impact.
Turkey: Choose your Memories
Music is one of the key pillars of culture, so tourist boards are right to turn to sound when promoting the diversity and richness of their country – but it can be a difficult thing to get right. When it comes to finding the sound of a country, there is a delicate balance to be struck between using traditional sounds native to the country and using overbearing, obvious, sometimes naff musical choices.
Blending traditional turkish violin music with contemporary pop influences, Turkey’s latest campaign blends the exotic with the familiar. The soundtrack, ‘Fly Above’, produced by Turkish DJ Mahmut Orhan, is a strong addition to the campaign’s message about the cultural diversity and depth of experience available to travellers, capturing the spirit of adventure and exploration expressed in the visuals, and heightening it.
Iceland: Let it Out
Putting sound front and centre in their campaign, in July 2020, Iceland launched an attention-grabbing ad that asked people to release their frustrations with a scream. It’s wonderfully creative and unexpected direction allowed character and personality to shine through, and added a participatory element- people were invited to record their own screams that would then be played out across the Icelandic landscape.
Rather than relying on expected tropes of calming and relaxing music to pair with their sensational landscapes, this approach fights against convention to become much more memorable and exciting, and the fun pop rock soundtrack gives a Wes Anderson-esque charm to the ad.
Aside from tourism boards finding their unique sounds, airlines, hotels and booking companies are all dipping their toes into the seas of sonic branding; click here to experience the sound of Singapore Airlines by DLMDD.
