Impact of audio jingles on online consumer engagement in Sri Lankan context

Branding has developed to a level that consumers are no longer just consumers but brand enthusiasts. Brands greatly incorporate visual branding strategies into their branding schemes but rarely incorporate and continue using sonic branding strategies that elevate brand recognition and create an emotional connection with the brand which leads to increased consumer engagement. (Jackson & Jankovich, 2013). Out of all sonic branding tools, audio jingles are a powerful branding tool that is often ignored by most of the brands in Sri Lanka because of the absence of academic resources regarding the subject and the lack of knowledge about the positive impacts of audio jingles. On the contrary, the brands that incorporate audio jingles in their branding schemes have evidently shown many positive impacts including elevated online consumer engagement. (R. Perera, personal communication, September 14, 2022). In this study, five top television commercial audio jingles that have ever been made in Sri Lanka based on the recommendation of four industry experts are selected and analysed in accordance with ‘Ghuneim’s typology of engagement’, which is a framework that has been developed to measure online consumer engagement. This analysis reveals the capability of audio jingles to gain very high levels of consumer engagement, thus confirming the power of audio jingles to perform as an effective branding tool.