At a time when marketers are navigating consumers’ shrinking attention spans and scrolling behaviour, Haran Ramachandran, Head of Creative Lab – JAPAC, Spotify, made a case for audio as an immersive storytelling and marketing medium for brands, at a session on the second day of Goafest 2026.
In his keynote address, titled ‘Make Some Noise: Why Your Next Big Idea Should Be Sound-On’, Ramachandra challenged the dominance of visual-first advertising, arguing that the industry is fighting a losing battle for visual attentiveness. Highlighting that we are in an era of divided attention, he said, “Brand managers and clients, this is where your campaigns go. Creative people, those ideas that you've agonised over and the details that kept you up at night, this is where they go—lost in the scroll hole.”
Presenting sound as a medium that can connect with people in moments where screens cannot, he emphasised that audio has the potential to become a brand’s identity.
A key theme throughout the session was the participative and imaginative nature of audio storytelling. To demonstrate the point, Ramachandran turned the session into an interactive exercise. Playing a series of sounds for the audience, he asked people to identify them or describe the scenes they imagined while listening. Without visuals or prompts, the audience built vivid mental pictures.
According to Ramachandran, this is what makes audio fundamentally different from visual media—it fits seamlessly into people’s lives, during workouts, commutes or moments of down time.
In his address, the Spotify executive also pointed to a broader crisis in storytelling, stating that even celebrated creative industries like filmmaking are catering to a distracted audience. For him, this shift represents a worrying compromise. “Visual media has turned our greatest storytellers to treating their audience like goldfish,” he said, arguing that repetition is increasingly being rewarded over originality. Rejecting that approach, he positioned audio as a medium that still rewards imagination and attention.
Taking the conversation from storytelling to branding, Ramachandran remarked that sound can become a defining part of how consumers experience products and services. “Audio can be identity. Yes, for music artists, but also for your brand,” he said. “Think about the entire life cycle of your product or service—from the way it is manufactured to the way it is consumed and the emotion it makes you feel. Somewhere along that cycle, there is a sound.”
Concluding the session, Ramachandran urged brands to rethink where they place their creative energy. “We are spending billions on a staring contest with an audience who is actively looking the other way,” he said. “There is another route you can take. We can get in a studio and we can make some noise.”
