How to make people guess the brand even before they see it?

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!