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In August 2018, BBC.com published an article called "The Art and Science of Being On Hold." Written by Damian Fowler, the piece featured input from members of our BusinessVoice team - Jerry Brown, Steve Evert and Scott Greggory. BusinessVoice is our Caller Experience Marketing agency. 

Here is an abridged version of the article.

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Hold Music as a Branding Tool

Nowadays, hold music isn’t left to chance. There are companies like BusinessVoice, which specializes in On Hold Marketing for mid-to large-size companies. They see the On Hold experience as an expression of brand identity, mixing music with a verbal message - which sounds closer to a radio advertisement than, say, an easy-listening jazz number.

When creating an On Hold Marketing plan for a new client, BusinessVoice initiates a “caller experience” audit. They will determine things like how frequently the same person calls and the longest time a person will be put on hold. If the average hold time is five minutes, for example, a caller doesn’t want to hear a three-minute loop. The company also determines the caller demographic and from there creates its plan to make the call experience better. “You really want to use the time that people wait on hold to make them feel good about your company,” says Jerry Brown, the founder and CEO of BusinessVoice.

What this means is that on hold music and messaging is necessarily curated according to the needs of the client and the customer. The music and the message are tailored to ensure a positive On Hold experience.

According to Brown, it gets quite scientific. For a company that has a queue for sales and a queue for services, BusinessVoice would create two completely different messages and formats [for] those separate call experiences. “A lot of time we pick out music based on beats per minute of a song. So, if you’re a customer service line where people are holding for 10 minutes, we don’t want to have high beats per minute. If it’s a sales queue and you’re trying to move people to action, we want to increase their heart rate a little bit,” explains Brown.

The company also pays attention to whether hold music should be in a major or a minor key, offering subtle emotional cues to the caller on hold.

The Grammys of Hold Music

The world of on hold music and messaging even has its own awards. The MARCE Awards is an annual competition held by the Experience Marketing Association. This year, the “Most Effective On Hold Marketing” prize went to Behler-Young, a distributor of heating and cooling products based in the U.S. Midwest, for its hold message tagged “I’m Sworn to Secrecy.” Created by BusinessVoice - which has scooped up many MARCE awards over the years - it’s a highly produced sequence featuring spoof spy music, and a humourous voiceover that channels Mission Impossible.

Humor On Hold is another important concept for engaging callers. “If somebody can make me laugh in that space where there’s usually an ad, I feel more of an affection for that company,” says Scott Greggory, the Chief Creative Officer of BusinessVoice. With a background in radio, Greggory pioneered the idea of making On Hold Marketing palatable with what he calls the “spoonful of sugar” approach.

During the 2018 ADDY Awards ceremony, our BusinessVoice team was recognized once again for their humorous approach to marketing.

We earned a Silver ADDY for the On Hold Marketing we produced for Lakeland Auto and Marine. We also received a Bronze award for the radio campaign we created for Ray’s Trash in Indianapolis.

Take a listen to the winning work in the videos below. 

If you have anything to say about how your brand sounds, you'll want to check out these blog posts. They're from BusinessVoice, our Caller Experience Marketing agency. The team also creates radio commercials, audio logos, and other forms of audio marketing.

1) In “One Way to Tell Your Story to Callers On Hold,” we profile a very special On Hold Marketing production we created for a local school. It’s won several awards, primarily by winning the audience’s collective heart. We also suggest a way you can capture the same type of emotion in your OHM and other marketing channels.

2) Does your company advertise on radio? If so, there’s a very good reason to let someone other than the local air talent or production director write and record your spots. See what it is in the post “Don’t Let the Radio Station Produce Your Commercials.” (Listen to our MarCom Platinum Award-winning radio campaign for Ray's Trash.)

3) Yes, your callers on hold are out of sight, but have you put them out of your mind as well? If so, that’s a problem. In this post, you’ll hear an example of how one company is clearly not thinking about their callers. We break down their approach to help you avoid wasting your callers’ time on hold. Read and listen to “Are You Subjecting Your Callers to This?”

4) And because every one of your company’s touchpoints can make or break a customer relationship, don’t miss the post “Are Poor Phone Skills Costing You Money?” 

Only one radio campaign won a 2017 Platinum MarCom Award. Ours.

The humorous five-spot series we created for Ray’s Trash in Indianapolis took one of the top prizes in the international competition, which receives about 6,000 entries annually.

“Ray’s asked us to produce a radio spot to run during the Indianapolis Indians radio broadcasts this past summer,” said MadAveGroup CCO Scott Greggory. “We considered the five-month season and the four-spot-per-game frequency, and then suggested creating five spots instead. We knew that hearing the same spot over and over could lead to listener burnout, which would result in frustration with the brand. A greater variety of spots would prevent that problem.”

Platinum Award - Ray’s Trash Radio Campaign
Writer: Scott Greggory
Voices: Amy Scott and Scott Greggory
Recording Engineer: Chris Zaharias

BusinessVoice, our Caller Experience Agency, won two Gold MarCom Awards and an Honorable Mention, all for On Hold Marketing we created.

Gold Award - SYSTEMseven On Hold Marketing
Writers: Shaun Turner and Scott Greggory
Voices: Amy Scott and Scott Greggory
Recording Engineer: Chris Zaharias

Gold Award - International Translating Company On Hold Marketing
Writer: Scott Greggory
Voices: Amy Scott and Scott Greggory
Recording Engineer: Don Binkley

Honorable Mention - Notre Dame Academy On Hold Marketing

Writer: Andrea Poteet
Voices: Amy Jeffries
Recording Engineer: Don Binkley

If you want to improve the impression that your company leaves on callers, you may want to consider this: BusinessVoice, our Caller Experience Marketing agency, won the highest honor in the On Hold Marketing industry for the second time in three years at the 2017 MARCE Awards.

The MARCEs are presented each year to acknowledge marketing and creative excellence in On Hold Marketing entries from around the world.

“The Girls at Notre Dame” earned two awards: Best Branding and Best of Show. We crafted the production for our client Notre Dame Academy, a Catholic girls school in our hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

“We're always thinking about how to elevate the caller experience,” said Chief Creative Officer Scott Greggory. “The Notre Dame production is a great example of introducing first-person stories and sincere emotion to paint a vivid picture in callers' minds.”

Andrea Poteet wrote the voiceover copy, Don Binkley was the recording engineer, and Amy Jeffries provided the voiceover. Hanson Inc. provided the students' voiceovers.

The MARCE Awards judges shared many nice comments about the piece, including these:

“Great concept. The testimonial / word-of-mouth feel is strong and believable. And the spectrum of information shared is tremendous.”

“The music bed was current, the VO delivery was very solid, and the [stories] left a great impression. Well done, guys.”

BusinessVoice has earned 14 MARCE Awards. That's more than any other On Hold Marketing provider in the world. The competition began in 2005.

Our branding and design team, d2i, earned a Silver award at the 2017 ADDY Awards ceremony.

Designers Terry Lesniewicz and Greg Stawicki teamed up to create a winning poster series for The Mad Ave Collective (above left).

“The Collective’s logo inspired the posters,” said Stawicki. “We used elements from the logo to create strong, simple graphic messages that would engage viewers.”

“We took a contemporary minimalist approach with this project; very simple, very little copy,” said Lesniewicz. “It’s an attitude, and the response so far has been ‘WOW!’ especially from a lot of younger people who have responded to the work. It was fun to be the first agency in this area to adopt this style.”

Lesniewicz is a nationally known designer who’s been elevating brands for more than five decades. His work has been featured in magazines, award shows, even a museum, and has been seen by countless millions of people.

The d2i crew also designed the collateral for the ADDY Awards, including the call-for-entries poster, invitation and winners' booklet (above right).

BusinessVoice, our caller experience agency, received a Bronze ADDY for a humorous On Hold Marketing production they created for Arrowwood Lodge in Baxter, Minnesota.

BusinessVoice has won more awards for its work than any other OHM provider in the industry. The creative team specializes in developing Humor On Hold™. Listen to their winning entry in the video below. 

Print Campaign - 2017 ADDY Awards Collateral

Our d2i team designed the posters, call for entries mailer, tickets, winners book and certificates for the Advertising Club of Toledo's 2017 ADDY Awards ceremony. The Mardi Gras theme carried through all the work and set the stage for the celebration. 

Promotional Posters - Mad Ave Collective

In this poster series, our d2i designers found different ways to communicate the value of The Mad Ave Collective by re-purposing the logo. The work won a Silver ADDY Award at the 2017 ceremony.

On Hold Marketing - Notre Dame Academy

When we heard the student testimonials on a new NDA video, we knew right away that we wanted to incorporate them into the school's next On Hold Marketing production. Thankfully, our friends at cross-town agency Hanson Inc. allowed us to use their audio for our piece. We were moved by the young women's expressions of pride in and gratitude for NDA. We hope you will be, too.  

MadAveGroup has been recognized once again for "outstanding achievement" in the field of marketing and communications by the 2013 MarCom Awards, an international creative competition that includes entries by media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies.

BusinessVoice, our On Hold Marketing agency, received the highest honor - a Platinum MarCom Award - for "Binkelmania," a humorous On Hold Marketing production we created for Binkelman Corporation. (Listen in the video below.)    

We also earned a Gold MarCom Award for a series of three radio spots we created for Spirit Services. (Listen to them in the video below.)

"The radio spots we produce for Spirit are not only designed to encourage a specific response," said VP of Creative Services Scott Greggory, "they support the company's brand identity. We want that audio to sound like what their website and social media channels look like. That way, there's a stronger connection with the brand as people move from the radio to Spirit's online world."

"That's one of the advantages of working with an agency like ours. Radio and TV stations are in the business of production and distribution, not necessarily great content creation. We focus on each client's message, supporting their brand identity, and strengthening the audience's perception of their company in a creative way," said Greggory. "Ours is a consistent and long-term approach." 

I know: why would you call your own company and ask to be put on hold, right? 

The answer: Because your company puts customers on hold, and you want to make sure their experience is the best it can be.

Checking your automated systems - such as your On Hold Marketing, website and others - to make sure they're functioning properly is well worth your time.

When you go to our blog post on the topic, you can listen to some unfortunate audio that would make any Marketing Director cringe. It just may inspire you to review your own systems. Read "Put Yourself On Hold" on the BusinessVoice website.