Sonic Branding: Transcending Shapes and Colors into the Realm of Aural Experiences

Every day, every minute, and anywhere you go you are exposed to a ton of branding messages. Smartly designed billboards, ad breaks, Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube videos, and now the tenderfoot kid – audio branding is invading the minds of the consumers leaving behind a strong impression in their hearts.

The previous generations considered branding to be a logo, color, brochures, tagline, and even well-thought ads. However, branding also encompasses sound that connects a consumer directly with the brand.

Yes – the next wave in marketing is the voice. After the emergence of Alexa and Google Home, audio has gained popularity like never before. Also, it’s super clear that this is just the beginning. As voice gains popularity, so branding in the audio is also significant and essential.

What is Sonic Branding?

Sonic branding is about how your brand sounds and is recalled by the customer – like a little jingle at the beginning of the game or a sound you hear when the computer boot-up. It’s about becoming part of the life of your consumer’s experience.

As humans, we are gifted with ability to see, feel by touch, smell, and hear things. Since there are many things to do, people often prefer to listen to something over watching it. You might be a bookworm, but there are people out there who love to listen to YouTube videos while they work. There is no right or wrong with this, and it’s just that at times the audio leaves a strong impact on our senses and especially to our subconscious mind.

If you remember ESPN’s legendarily tagline, “It’s in the Game.”

That’s because it was sonic branding targeted for people like you and me.

So, who can forget – the SEGA

That’s the power of audio branding that you will never be able to forget. I am not a big fan of McDonald’s but only a caveman cannot recognize this tagline:

Now that you know what sonic branding is and how audio branding can affect your mood, your taste, and your senses. Let’s look at some ways in which you can maximize your brand recognition by using audio branding.

Understand what does your Branding Need

Before you go deep into audio branding, take a step back, try to understand your brand voice first. You must understand the style and your brand values. For this you need to answer these questions carefully:

• What is unique about your brand?
• What are your brand values?
• Who is your ideal customer?

When you answer these questions, you will be able to translate the answers into some branding elements, such as logo, typography, and even brand voice. Since sonic branding is one of these elements so you require constant branding at variety of places like website, social media channels and even Facebook Live.

The audio branding demands that you use elements that define the style of your brand. Is your brand Fun as Disney, Serious as Apple, Educational as Fisher Price, Funky as Snapchat, Artistic as Lego? Then your audio branding should be too.

Diverging sound elements should be embedded within your audio logo, music, jingles, and voiceovers.

How Music is Selected?

The audio branding of your brand should match the visual and basic concept of the brand. This means that you should begin by figuring out which type of music will fit your brand? You can figure this out by determining the sense that your products give to people.

• Slow or fast music, which type defines your brand personality?
• Will you prefer high tone or low tone?
• Is it Classical or Modern?
• Do you prefer single instrument or many instruments?
• Which genre fits best for your brand?

Have you narrowed down your clients? Imagine which type of music will appeal to them? What will make them attracted to your brand? While some elements of music like rhythm, tones, forms remains the same in every culture, there are micro-notes and variations of tones that differ one music from others.

Jingles or an Audio Song

If we start with audio song, the lyrics must align with the language of the customer.

A teenager will talk differently vs a fifty-something person talks. Pay attention to the tone, language, and expression of the customer.

A song should not be long but is has to be at point. Don’t overwhelm your audience. Words that have been put together thoughtfully will stick in our minds more than lengthy sales pitches.

Let’s get nostalgic with these popular jingles from the past.

Take the highlights of your brand and write a short song or a jingle, catchy enough that fits the personality of your brand.

Whatever text you use should be authentic and reflect the tone of your marketing presence. For instance, a casual product or service should have a script with a light, fun tone.

The Voiceovers

Brands often go for a familiar voice. Just like in the movies when a familiar voice does the voiceover its gives people a push towards the brand. At a subconscious level familiarity drives brand recognition.

Once you’ve designed the branded audio pieces, you must use them across all the channels so that customers familiarize themselves with the brand voice. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does wonders for building brand recognition.

Sound is effective. Let your audience use all of their senses to embrace and recognize your brand.

With commitment comes stability, growth, but the danger of stagnation. With freedom comes the short-term fun of discovery, but also the danger of never fully connecting.

By all means play the field, if you’re the kind of brand that would find a unique theme too restrictive. There are lots of exciting ways to harness the power of music for advertising which aren’t audio branding; plenty of ways, indeed, to establish a musical identity which don’t involve fidelity to a single brand theme. Keep those audio branding companies at arm’s length: you don’t need them.