Steve Keller Shares His Perspective on Sonic Branding, Voice and Diversity (Episode 170)
Welcome Steve Keller
Steve Keller is the Sonic Strategy Director for City Resonate, an in-house creative consultancy for SXM Media. SXM Media is a parent brand where Steve offers support to brands that advertise on SXM Media’s platforms including SiriusXM, Pandora, Stitcher, and Soundcloud.
How Steve Got Interested in Music and Why He Loves It So Much
When Steve was a kid, his parents bought him a Disney album called the Great Composers and he was in love with Beethoven. Steve started taking piano lessons when he was 6 years old. In junior sigh, he had a cousin who was playing the guitar, and Steve was inspired to play the guitar. He also started writing songs in high school. He never thought about music as a career even though it was always in the background.
Steve ended up studying psychology and got his undergraduate in psychology and had planned on going to grad school. Instead of grad school, Steve ended up going to Nashville, where it all began.
What Was Steve’s Claim to Fame?
In the early ’90s, country music was exploding everywhere and people were coming to dance clubs to do line dancing. Country dance nights turned into country dance clubs with DJs that were asking for country labels, extended mixes, and beat mixes. At the time, Steve was one of two guys that was skilled at doing all these things.
Steve soon started getting hired by popular artists such as Tim McGraw, Neil Diamond, and Wynonna. Steve also started doing music for commercials and really loved advertising and branding, especially the discipline of advertising and marketing.
What Was Steve’s Aha Moment?
In 2005, Steve discovered a book written by Daniel Jackson (who was an early pioneer of Sonic Brand). When Steve read this book is when he had his aha moment. This aha moment led Steve to launch his own company in 2005 that was a blend of psychology, research, music, sound entertainment, and advertising & marketing.
What Led Steve to Get into Voice and Diversity?
As Steve took a deeper dive into Sonic strategy and moved away from the world of production and more into consulting, that resulted in drawing Steve back to academia.
Steve wondered why he is only hearing white voices and maybe we are just defining the general market (from a sonic perspective) as white. Steve read a book by Jennifer Lynn Stover called “The Sonic Color Line” in which Jennifer traced the idea of race as a sonic construct and not just a visual or a textual construct. In this book, Jennifer talks about “the listening ear” and Steve calls that “racialized listening.”
Has Steve Considered Utilizing Clubhouse as a Source for Research?
When Steve did the research, he started with an in-depth literature review in which he evaluated how do we define the sound of a black voice. Steve mentioned that based on the research, biologically, there is no reason why a black individual or a white individual would sound different.
Steve posed the question of what we are picking up on as listeners? There are dialectical cues, and we may pick up on some of the pronunciations and idioms.
Steve’s Sonic Diet Tip
Steve presented an example of how one can lower the volume of things, dim the lights, and put on slow music to stop eating sooner and as a result, feel full and that will facilitate cutting down your calorie intake.
Learn More About Steve Keller
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn
Follow Steve on Twitter
Follow Steve on Clubhouse
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