Get the Music Right and the Hearts and Minds Will Follow

“Whoever controls the music controls the mood of the room.”

That’s one of my favorite aphorisms shared by auto-didact marketing genius Roy Williams during Alia’s and my visit to Wizard Academy a year or two ago.

“Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation,” wrote Oliver Sacks in a book he devoted to the subject.

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote “without music i should wish to die.”

How ironic that we fundraisers will fuss over every word and endlessly tweak paragraphs in emails and letters that no donor is likely ever to read, yet we settle for second or third rate photography and barely adequate stock music in our videos.

We Internet marketing folk have so much more than words in our arsenal, so why do we routinely gloss over the most emotional tools in our toolbox?

This idea of music driving the narrative comes up again and again. When I was learning to edit underwater video, my sensei Michael Maes’ first and most important piece of advice was to choose the music first and make the images fit the music.

When was the last time you followed Michael’s advice?

Here’s a piece of music that inspires me every day from my favorite singer-songwriter Liz Longley. If you’re not moved, you’re not listening.