Sound branding develops brand personality

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!