Selling the Sound of Silence – How much do you charge?

How can I differentiate myself from my competition?

Everybody is trying to communicate as much as possible. We want to be louder, sharper, and more innovative than our competitor. Everybody is getting husky (at least they would if communication was a live event) and nobody understands what the others say. The good news is that we found the loudest, sharpest, most differentiated and most innovative instrument in modern marketing communication of our time:

Silence

Imagine those medieval times when the loudest sound around were the church bells and the singing during the mass. During those times the “sound monopoly” of the church was a powerful instrument of communication. But those times are over. In fact, they have been reversed. Now, silence or a small measure of silence being a gap of sound have become powerful instruments.

We have talked about the effect of silence in one of our earlier posts here. It is amazing how our attention gets stimulated by silence. Therefore it doesn’t seem revolutionary to state that silence can be an important part of a brand’s sound. But how much do you charge for the sound of silence? How do you convince a brand manager that it’s time to shut up? Does anyone have experience with selling the sound of silence? How do you work with breaks/gaps of sound in your sound branding endeavors? Please feel free to share with us…