Earworms

Idling away over a bank holiday, I learned of earworms.

Songs that stick in your head. Tunes that pop up unannounced. Music that you just can’t shake.

As the afore-linked piece asks; Why do we get songs stuck in our heads in the first place? If we know that, then maybe there’s a juicy crossover to the world of the pitch?

The barely researched concept had a number of terms; stuck-song syndrome, sticky music, and cognitive itch, or most commonly “earworm”. And an apparent offshoot in “involuntary memory“. So one brave soul determined a list of triggers;

• Recent music exposure
• Repeated music exposure
• Word triggers
• People triggers
• Situation trigger
• Stress
• Surprise
• Dreams
• Mind wandering

I very much like some of these. Especially the trio with the word “trigger” in them.

Imagine you can create such a trigger to your proposal around any of these three.

What word, person or situation which, when it crops up, will automatically get your prospects thinking of you? You can even do the whole stage-act thing of planting it (which I’ve blogged on before in the guise of Anchoring).