Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

Photo by Susan NYC.

A few weeks back I asked the LinkedIn community a simple question: “Which brands do you recognize by their sounds?”

Many people responded with TV jingles, others with product experiences, and some mentioned the sound of physical spaces. There are/were no “right” or “wrong” answers, but some resonated with me more than others. I’m writing about a few of those here.

One wasn’t really a brand association as much as it was a category association: the sound of popcorn being equated with the experience of being at the movies.

Oddly (?) “at the movies” isn’t really a place for me. It’s a memory and a feeling of a feeling, laced with drama and excitement, the splendor of film from years ago. This is escapist! This is special! This is huge! And it’s all brought on by a few bites of popcorn.

Architects, industrial designers, digital designers and other flavors of experience designers should be more playful with associations like this. We’re rich with memories, of course, and when we draw from our massive palette of emotional triggers, we begin to chip away the cracks of meaning and emotion, those things which by and large make us human.

Saatchi and Saatchi popularized the phrase “facts lead to conclusions. Emotion leads to action.” This sums up nicely why at the end of the day commodity brands just can’t compete with experiential brands.

This brings to mind Jean-Louis’s story in Marc Gobe’s book Brand Jam: “If I serve a roasted chicken to someone brought up in a farm and include the smell of hay at the same time (perhaps with a fragrant oil on the plate), it can bring that person back to his or her childhood experience or maybe mom’s cooking. This discovery will be able to enhance my clients’ experiences. There is so much more we can do to stimulate our senses.”

This segues nicely with a great feature series at Design Week on the topic of interaction design and the senses. One of the pieces features Sonic ID’s very own “sonic futurologist” Martyn Ware. Prepare to be engaged!

– Noel Franus

PS: More insights from the survey soon, I promise…