Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

Most of us would agree that the most ideal form of branding is the experience in which users interact directly with a brand, by choice, and then spread that on virally to others. Many companies spend dearly in their attempt to nudge us into this kind of relationship, and few achieve it. And yet…

Apple’s at it. Again. This time, it’s not even by design.

Apple’s iPhone has its own ringtone, and that ringtone is, natrually, making the rounds on the web. And wouldn’t you know it, people are having fun with it, even making their own songs out of it as part of a contest over at sneakmove. (Some of the entries are even kinda catchy.)

All this from a product that won’t be released for another 5 1/2 months. Most zillion-dollar Super Bowl commercials can’t even achieve this kind of resonance and participation. Nice job (again), Cupertino.

They asked. And the world answered.

1. Vomiting
2. Microphone feedback
3. Wailing babies
4. Train scraping on tracks
5. Squeaky seesaw
6. Poorly played violin
7. Whoopee cushion
8. Argument in a soap opera
9. Powerlines humming
10. Tasmanian devil

Entirely subjective, but still good for a chuckle. I’d be curious about an objective study that investigated involuntary stress-level responses to particular sounds…I have a feeling wailing babies and honking car horns might move a tad higher up the list. But that’s just my (entirely subjective) opinion. (Thanks Stephen.)

Wow, it’s been a while. You get a chance to take a break and, like a deep-pack snow, things have a way of quieting down, of providing just a tad more clarity, and of breathing a little easier.

For the past four years I’ve been a strategist at Sun Microsystems, and in that time I’ve had the incredible fortune to create and lead the audio brand strategy for Sun and its ubiquitous Java brand. We’ve blazed some amazing trails, having developed a very extensive audio brand for both functional and promotional purposes.

Guiding me through much of this has been a team of brilliant thinkers, strategists and musicians: Scott, Rayan, Fritz and Susan, most of them with Elias Arts — the agency that started it all with the launch of MTV and an accompanying sonic logo. On my own client side, I couldn’t have been more proud of Rhodes, Glenn and the rest of the brand team at Sun who bent their brains and committed to making this a reality. Thank you all.

This week I’m thrilled to join Elias Arts as their Director of Strategy. If you’ve been reading this website with any frequency, you know that I’m motivated by the desire to grow audio identity as a practice; the opportunity to dimensionalize brands in this way is still woefully untapped, and still largely misunderstood. I’d like to change that, and Elias Arts is an ideal platform for doing so: they’ve been doing this for more than 25 years, and they’ve evolved far beyond sonic logos. They’ve got the chops.

Yes, I’m excited about the chance to raise the level of the conversation for all of us, and for the rising tide to lift all boats. Whether that happens by way of our dialogue here at the site, at public forums elsewhere (stay tuned for more on that) or through formal client engagements, it’s bound to be a good thing for all of us.

All for now. Hey, speaking of conversations, I’ll be in Portland, the Bay Area, Southern California and New York in the next couple of weeks. Coffee anyone? Get in touch: noel at intentionalaudio dot com.

– Noel Franus