Monthly Archives: June 2016

24 Jun 2016

Somewhere between the lines I mentioned that sound branding gives a powerful boost to brand recognition. This relates to what I mentioned before about signal sound, and may seem obvious once you think about it in the context of branding.

The fact that there is more than just one communication channel available for branding is nothing new. Now here is how sound branding and “traditional” visual branding works together:

Even from the very basic definition of branding we all know from the American Marketing Association a brand is a way of differentiating which is done by using a distinctive characteristics, this was mostly referred to logos and slogans at first. However, that time has long past.

Today, you can hardly come across as much as a pin without a brand promise.

They brand everything: from bottled water, through banking services, to experience, even physical space is strategically branded. This is done all around the world for similar products, services and more. Now that is a lot of brands using logos and slogans to differentiate themselves. All of them strive to become recognizable with similar strategies.

There are more powerful ways than visual logos and slogans available for branding.

If simply a visual logo and a slogan which guides visual design is recognized as enough to differentiate a brand and make it recognizable by consumers, then what if we add a whole new dimension of identification?

The thing is that so much brands use visual representation that it is not that unique anymore.

All of that visual branding stuck together in a single world where everybody strives for attention, where we pay for a chance of people seeing our logo, all of that is a massive amount of competition to overcome.

However, there is another world out there. A world of possibilities which is not yet crowded as much by branded communication. That world is sound.

In the world of sound people often relate the most emotionally intense moments of their lives to music. They might relate the music to an artist. They might relate it to a place. Therefore, they might also relate it to what we want to brand. This is a whole new world of recognition waiting to be used.

Now think of the possibilities of the two worlds of recognition: visual and sound, working together to brand. This is why sound branding gives a powerful boost to brand recognition.

Contact Soundbranding now to start developing your brand’s sound identity!

17 Jun 2016

Last week, I mentioned that sound branding develops brand personality, and therefore is a powerful tool to differentiate the brand in a consistent way and on a whole new level. We can view brand personality as things which make the brand closer to being human. It may involve acting in a certain way towards situations; it may mean ascribing certain qualities of a product or service; it may be linked to certain stories; but all of this is meant to induce emotions to connect with people. Feel free to try out an example yourself:

What is crucial, however, is that whether it involves communicating emotions or characteristics, branding requires consistency. There is no better way than music when it comes to inducing emotions that people relate to their memories. Just think about all the subcultures present throughout history, they were mostly based on music; and all of these subcultures attracted thousands of people who identified with them.

Now there is a ready relation to branding and brand personality just there.

You can ensure that a brand supports ecology and health by developing organic food products, you can call a phone intelligent because of advanced and intuitive technology, but communicating all that consistently through visuals alone may be a tough call. Well, sound and music is right there waiting to be put to work. Music has a history of connecting emotion to identity, and with the right knowledge it may be used to capture the identity of the brand, as well as develop it to reach new hights.

Consistently communicating an identity which links emotions with the brand may be the best route to maintaining a strong personality.

So somewhere between service and branding let us presume that your branded Irish bar wants to develop a strong personality and build awareness. You will definitely have themed music played there to support the experience, you will have a branded design and a logo positioned where appropriate. But does the music you pick tell everything you want about the brand?

Or is it just there by accident because it just happens to be popular or fitting the theme?

It may be a powerful medium to have a piece out there, mixed with all the popular ones, that communicates what the brand is exactly, and all of it, so that people can feel it through emotions. Just like during an actual rock concert. Trust me, just the music may make people feel the message. It is what digital experience design is also about in majority. Sound has the power to do that in digital space, and the reality was here way longer then computers. This works for real spaces as well. We all want to develop our brands to be their own little worlds. But if we want them to be so and have a real personality, we need to brand them on all touchpoints with sound included.

All of this is but a step away from brand awareness isn’t it?

That is one of the reasons why we want an organic brand personality to begin with. While sound branding develops brand personality it may also build brand awareness among consumers, but to learn more about this, stay tuned for next week’s release, or contact us at Soundbranding right now!

10 Jun 2016

10 good reasons why sound branding is beneficial

As brands strive for differentiation and try to create an advantage in an increasingly competitive market, there are niche tool that not everybody knows about. One of these is audio branding, which entails branding with sound and music. Why sound branding is beneficial?

1. Sound branding develops brand personality

The brand will create a sound brand personality that differentiates and actually brands the brand on a whole new level. Learn more here.

2. Sound branding gives a powerful boost to brand recognition

When a brand has a sound personality it will be uniquely recognizable among other brands in the same way as your favorite music may trigger memories associated with the track. Learn more here.

3. A sound personality is flexibly developed along with the brand

The history of sound branding provides the best examples of flexibility: BBC2 and McDonalds have been working consistently with the creation of new versions of the same sound pattern in a very convincing way. Learn more here.

4. Sound branding is cost efficient

Traditionally, TV advertising has been accompanied by soundtracks from famous artists like Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Tina Turner, or David Bowie which generate licensing costs. With your own unique corporate sound identity there will be no repeated licensing costs. Learn more here.

5. Sound branding saves money on airtime or other message repetitions

Instead of spending on 15 or 30 seconds tv spots, you can cut your costs to 2 – 4 seconds, and the target group will still recognise the brand by recognising the sound.

6. Sound branding takes ownership to the memory of your target group

When ‘the right sound’ is designed and integrated in your communication, marketing or branding it sticks in the memory of the target group through creating the mood and emotions that are conveyed in the sound design and music tracks which are employed for sound branding.

7. Sound branding creates recall

With ‘the right sound signature’ you will achieve an immediate rational and emotional responce. Listening to the first few notes of your favourite track with your favourite band creates no doubts as to why you love it and how it makes you feel even if you have no words to explain why – the same effect may be employed in relation to a brand.

8. Sound branding maximises the impact

Without a ‘sound brand personality’ you have no tool to position your brand in a fragmented media landscape where all branding, advertising and marketing products will be accessable on media devices where sound and video is already integrated as a preferred form of communication.

9. Sound branding maximises long-term awareness

When a brand is consistent in it´s communication over the years, the sound constantly positions the brand, and thus brand awareness increases continuously.

10. Sound branding is the connection between investment in sound design of a brand and the emotions of consumers

The exact nature of sound branding has been described in detail, including relevant case studies, in the book: “Soundbranding – the connection between investment and emotion”.

3 Jun 2016

Last time, I mentioned that we may sometimes be able to guess a smartphone brand by its ringing tune, or ringtone as we usually call it. In today’s world where we are bombarded with custom, genuine, unique, and branded visual design aiming to catch our attention. Everything is branded with a visual logo stuck on it, from our food, through our clothes, heck even the toilet paper producers goes to great lengths to diversify its product from thousands of same function stuff.

Obviously, all those brand colors and logos may be too much for an average person wanting to mind his or her own business to catch and identify.

Of course, we know all too well that this has something to do with information overflow and attention channeling; and of course, modern multimedia design, as the name may suggest, requires much more of branding than visuals nowadays. Therefore, the question is:

How can we get people to guess the brand even before they see it?

We employ more than one sense; this is why people may be attracted to restaurants if the smell is good, this is why Apple is so interested in how it feels to touch an iphone, and this is why we may tell a phone brand by its ringtone. However, while touch has to be usually initiated by the customer; and smell may reach us whether we like it or not, sound has all the reach qualities, and more!

Sound alone may catch attention bypassing the visual channeled vision tunnel, and boost recognition of visuals when integrated with them!

But there is still more! We have a long history of using sound to communicate or signal something, from language itself, through a simple knock on the door, or a ding on our microwave, to signal sounds used by an ambulance.

The fun part is that all that can be, and is, constantly branded. The more we hear a specific sound in a context the more memorable it becomes. An old reference to Pavlow’s Dog experiment is only a step away from this; and then there is music. This is when everything gets emotional, but I will get to that another time.

As we mention at Soundbranding, just as logo ownership may be protected, so can sound. This is also what most of the shitstorms in the music industry are about nowadays. However, the point is that sound design may reflect brand identity and its values just as good as visuals, or even better. Now if we were to combine that… well yet again another story for another time.

So how to make people guess the brand even before they see it? Do not do only what every brand out there does. Stop focusing simply on the visual, think beyond! Purchase “Soundbranding – the connection between investment and emotion” to learn even more right now!