Holding your audience:

By: Antony Morrison – Associate Partner, Walk Through Walls

What marketing can learn from Drum & Bass

What has Drum & Bass got in common with marketing?

More than you might think. And I don’t just mean the viral promotion that attracts huge numbers to sell-out events.

There’s psychology behind the way in which a well-crafted DJ set holds a crowd so avidly – and techniques all communicators can learn from.

A great live gig holds an audience with hooks, call-and-response, drops and surprises that keep people engaged. Great marketing does the same.

By grasping and honing this musician/audience relationship, DnB – like other genres before it – has built a devoted, borderline-obsessive fanbase. Something most brands would give their right arm for.

And if you’re not a Drum & Bass aficionado, you’ll be familiar with the methods from other types of live music – from classical to rock, house to jazz.

So here are the five key lessons – rooted in music psychology – that ought to form part of your next campaign…

The hook

Music and marketing 101: you need to engage and hold your audience. Sounds obvious, but too often overlooked.

In music, the best tracks demand attention. With a hook to draw the crowd in, then hold it by building tension, surprise and generating a response.

Effective communication does the same.

Yet too much marketing relies too heavily on creating a vibe – a nice melody, a background hum. Helpful to convey mood, tone and values, but passive.

To convert a positive impression into actual commitment, you need that hook. The reason your audience should care about what they’ve heard – and take action as a result. Why your message matters to your audience, what makes your offer different.

The test then is what you do with that hook – does the relationship stay one-way, or do you create a dialogue?…

Call and response

People want to participate. And live music gets this: audience participation is built into gospel, jazz, rock and yes even dance music.

Crucially, it doesn’t need speech – it requires a compelling pattern our brains recognise as requiring a response. The musician asks, the crowd answers – either vocally or physically.

As with music, effective marketing can harness the way we’re built to mirror, repeat and answer.

Rather than being a passive observer, your audience needs to feel compelled to act. That means linking outcomes to action. Communicating a shared goal, aspiration or objective – and how to achieve it by signing up, showing up or getting involved. And once someone’s responded, they’re more likely to stick with you.

But creating the hook and generating a response is just the start of the relationship…

The build-up and drop

In music, build-ups and drops keep a crowd hooked. If it’s formulaic and predictable, it falls flat. If it’s chaotic, you lose people.

The art is the balance – giving the crowd what they believe is coming, but in a way that surprises. A careful mix of consistency, familiarity and the unexpected that keeps people engaged.

Good marketing campaigns do the same. They balance recognition and familiarity with originality and surprise – combining a consistent message with new facts, solutions, insights or even humour.

When a message is coherent, it builds trust. When it adds novelty it becomes memorable.

Rhythm and relationship

This is where that critical ingredient – emotion – comes into play.

Humans are creatures of pattern, belonging and shared experience.

At a DJ set or music gig people don’t just hear music, they feel part of a collective moment. It’s social proof in action: everyone else is moving in rhythm, so you do too.

Marketing has the same dynamic. If your audience sees others acting – supporting, sharing, buying, joining – they’ll want to become part of the movement. Collective experience doesn’t just hold attention, it creates community.

A multi-sensory experience

Like modern marketing, today’s music is a full-spectrum experience.

A live set isn’t just sound. It’s lights, lasers, the smell of dry ice – and, if combined with a drink or two, taste as well. Triggering all our senses at once.

Multi-sensory experiences create immersion – and the more senses you engage, the deeper the memory trace.

That’s why the best marketing campaigns think beyond one dimension. The strongest combine message, design, video, sound, even interactivity. Delivered across multiple channels to create a ‘surround sound’ effect.

The more angles you reach people from, the harder it is for them to forget you.

The takeaway – don’t be background noise

All communication is a two-way process. It’s about getting an audience engaged, making them feel involved, with a hook and message that resonates.

So the danger isn’t bad marketing, it’s bland marketing.

If it doesn’t make people stop, respond, engage and remember, you’re not a DJ holding a crowd of thousands – you’re the lift music playing in the background.