Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

We define “sonic branding and identity” as the intentional use of music, sound, voice and silence to create a connection between people and organizations. Often one of the easiest ways to illustrate this is with the audio logo or sonic logo — the short identifier that brands often use as a brand signature or mnemonic. Mention the Yahoo! Yodel or the Intel Inside bong and people get it.

That’s the upside — but as with all good things, there’s a downside too…the risk of the C-word: commoditization. Today, for example, you can download your very own “sonic logo” in minutes for a few bucks. Yep, we’re talking stock photography, only with guitar.

More serious, however, is what the sonic logo can’t do. It can’t reflect the full breadth of a brand and its intentions in the experiences that matter most to customers. Once you step back and consider not what your brand sounds like, but how people experience it, the game changes. While many brand impressions are first seeded in advertising, it’s the first-hand experiences that customers have with your products or services that form lasting impressions.

For example, Harley customers don’t love the brand because of its commercials (do they even advertise?). They do, however, appreciate the unique hum and vibration of their hog, which you can hear from blocks away. This has nothing to do with sonic logos, advertising or even traditional marketing, yet this sound is a powerful brand asset for the folks at Harley.

Other product experiences that are driven or enhanced by sound (top of the mind) include the Apple and Windows startup sounds (as well as their error sounds); Nokia and Palm mobiles; heck, even a can of Pringles has its own sonic drama which is arguably more powerful than formal marketing.

Cities themselves have their own sonic identities, too, which we’ve written about before. Take the entire soundscape of the city of New Orleans. Or “Mind the Gap” in the London Underground.

Even Ford is getting into the game by quieting the rattles inside their cars, something BMW’s paid attention to for years, and which has a big impact on the balance sheet.

I get the feeling a sonic logo might not address that issue very well. But this is, however, something that sonic branding practitioners — and experience designers of every flavor, really — should be capable of doing. Solving problems. Building engagement. Making meaning.

This is what clients should demand with every sonic branding effort. Not just what can I sound like?, but how can I build brand faith everywhere my brand lives…across the end-to-end customer experience?

Otherwise you might as well grab that logo by the download. It does, after all, play a useful role. And hey, it’s fast and cheap. What could possibly go wrong?

– Noel Franus