Medical ad uses binaural technology

Remember the virtual barber shop mpeg that was circulated, making you feel, through sound alone, as if you were sitting in the barber shop having your hair cut? This technology, known as binaural sound (binaural literally means "having or relating to two ears"), has now been used in South Africa to market a "nutriceutical" product distributed by Abbott Laboratories. [audio]

With regulatory restrictions on how pharmaceuticals advertise to doctors, there is always a desire by industry players to come up with innovative ways to get their message across. The brief to Adnet, the agency working on the Abbott Laboratories Urology account, was to come up with something completely different.

“Globally, companies are always looking for innovative ways of marketing their products,” says Paul Hanly, director of Adnet. “When an ad can catch the target market's attention, a client's return on investment is guaranteed. This has become more difficult through traditional means, but essential with the global economic downturn.

“We did a few experiments with binaural sound. As far as we are aware, it has never been used on a commercial basis in South Africa and we thought it a perfect for the Abbott product,” continues Hanly. “We wanted the audience to experience and buy into the pain that chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) sufferers go through on a daily basis.”

Strong marketing drive

Q-Urol and Cysta-Q are dietary supplements specifically formulated to address symptoms associated with CPPS. Developed by Farr Laboratories, LLC in America, Abbot has been given the rights to distribute these products across southern Africa and has embarked upon a strong marketing drive to educate the public on the causes, symptoms, side effects and treatment of CPPS.

“The binaural experience will allow listeners to understand this pain, first hand, as it places you sonically where the sounds on the recording originate,” adds Hanly. “Using only a pair of standard headphones, the listener experiences sounds across a 360-degree sphere - a true virtual audio environment, allowing them to experience the sound rather than just hear it.”

According to Wikipedia, “the term ‘binaural' has often been mistaken as a synonym for the word ‘stereo', and this is partially due to a large amount of misuse in the mid-1950s by the recording industry, as a marketing buzzword.”

Binaural hearing, along with frequency cues, allows humans and other animals determine direction of origin of sounds. This means that the script has to be written in such away that allows the listener to “experience” what is going on around him.

Binaural hearing allows the brain to imagine what is going on around you. It creates the platform of illusion. Often the effect comes about not from what you actually hear but what the brain imagines is happening to you. A blend of volumes, directions, sound effects and periods of silence all create the binaural effect.

Typical stereo recordings are mixed for loudspeakers, and do not factor in natural cross feed or sonic shaping of the head and ear, since these things happen naturally as a person listens. Binaural recording is specifically for playback with headphones.

Binaural sounds have been used in the music industry for some time. Pearl Jam recorded an entire album, "Binaural", using this technique in 2000.

“Binaural could well become a new way of allowing existing and potential clients to experience your product, not just hear about it or see it,” concludes Hanly. “With the great assistance of Audio Arts, who imported technical recording headsets, and sitting in recording studios to perfect what we were after, we are exceptionally happy with the result.”

A human microphone

In order to achieve the true binaural effect, even the microphone stand had to be human. The binaural microphone resembles a normal pair of headphones worn on the head but the earpieces are the microphones and sit just before the ear. Bone density and the distance between the left and right headset microphones had to be exactly that of a human. Siphiwe Bambisa was the human microphone stand and had to sit for hours on end breathing silently without movement.

Hans Baumgarten of Audio Arts in Rivonia was chosen to do the sound engineering. His enthusiasm was clear from the start and Audio Arts went ahead and imported the specialised recording equipment from the USA.

Adnet is a through-the-line ad agency which was originally started in California, US, by Anthony Hanly. The South African company, based in Fourways, Johannesburg, started 15 years ago.

The ad was launched on 10 February 2009.