Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

Let’s skip the brandspeak and business chitchat for the morning and cut straight to the music. A few of this week’s musical-radar tidbits:

BoingBoingTV has a good interview with Big Peter of New Orleans’ Hot 8 Brass Band, one of a handful of smokin’ second-line bands in the city today…including the beloved Rebirth, the Dirty Dozen and my personal fave the Treme Brass Band. Watch:

Meanwhile, the kids can’t seem to get enough Man Man — especially the Ballad of Butterbeans. This Philly-based band is like Tom Waits with an espresso and a trampoline. This is the music your sedatives warned you about.

And finally, Birds & Batteries‘ Ocarina has quickly become my earworm of the week. Beatrix and I drove around town running errands all day yesterday, but it wasn’t a total waste because I had Ocarina on repeat-repeat-repeat. The song’s a scintillating throwback to 70’s-80’s keyboard album rock — which I’m not normally a huge fan of — and the simple, transformative lyrics make this a left-brain+right-brain treat.

Happy listening.

– Noel Franus

I’m not Canadian. But I do likes my hockey (go Sabres) and I grew up near Lake Ontario, which makes me almost one-quarter Canadian.

So I get it when people refer to the “Hockey Night in Canada” theme (formerly used in CBC hockey broadcasts) as Canada’s second national anthem…after 40 years in use, it’s more than the signal for the start of a show. It’s Pavlov’s dog on ice — for an entire country.

A few weeks back CBC blew its licensing negotiations with the theme’s composer; lo and behold the competing network CTV came in with a sweeter offer and swooped it away from the CBC.

In nabbing the rights to the theme, CTV removed decades of identity and authenticity from CBC. Just like that.

CBC will have a new theme in place this fall, but the Ottawa Citizen calls this a New-Coke move that’s bound for mediocrity at best…not because of what the new one is or isn’t musically speaking, but because of what the old one represents.

The Ottawa Citizen doesn’t stop there: “CBC committed a litany of business mistakes from surrendering a valuable asset, to tampering with an established brand, to trampling all over the customer experience.”

To-may-to, to-mah-to: you say it’s a song, I say it’s a valuable brand asset. What I’m wondering is why on earth the NHL didn’t jump into the negotiations; they’re the product. They should manage control of the emotions associated with the product — not leave it to the highest bidder who can do with it whatever they wish.

Take it away, YouTube:

– Noel Franus

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

Our second podcast is up: listen now. (MP3, 24 minutes)

In this second of a two-part interview with Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, Human League, Illustrious and Sonic ID) we hear about Martyn’s work with sensory design and immersive experiences in the healthcare environment. Also: what role does sound play in the recuperation process, and what can architects do to make life better for both guests, doctors and insurance providers?

Curious minds want to know. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. (MP3, 24 minutes)

Enjoy,

Noel Franus

• The dynamic duo at Audiobrain is featured in this month’s Fast Company. Nice job — great to see sonic branding and identity taking center stage in mainstream media.
• Martin Pazzani at Elias Arts has an interesting thought: too much music can dilute your brand. He’s right.
• And finally, my Sonic ID partner Martyn Ware (who’s populated this space recently) has an interesting new blog and podcast over at the Bowers and Wilkins website — part of its Society of Sound Lab. (Warning: clicking may suck you in for an entire afternoon.)

All for now. My podcast number two is going up this week. Stay tuned.

– Noel Franus

Photo by emurray

Professor Adrian North, the undisputed heavyweight in researching music’s effects on consumer behavior, has a new research hit. His latest finding: music enhances wine taste.

“White wine was rated 40% more zingy and refreshing when (such) music was played, but only 26% more mellow and soft when music in that category was heard.” Translation: sound affects perceptions — what you think, say and feel.

“Cognitive priming theory” might encourage winemakers to put music suggestions on their labels, says Prof. North.

I think that’s a great idea — and one that’s no doubt music to the ears of music marketers and licensed-music libraries. But I have to admit I wonder exactly how many people sense a need to hear their winemaker’s music suggestions. (Personally I’m all for it, but I’m far from an ideal demographic.)

On the other hand, all winemakers and retailers have a need to sell more wine. Let’s take it further and explore the role of music and sound at the actual point of purchase: what you hear affects what you buy and how you feel about that.

On a related and entirely self-serving note, we at Sonic ID are working with a fascinating luxury brand to explore creative options that address just that concern. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

– Noel Franus

> > Listen to the podcast now. (MP3, 22 minutes)

We’re finally pulling things together for our first podcast. This will happen weekly, at least on a trial basis. Our topics, of course, are sound, identity, design and brands.

What’s the role of sound in creating impressions, orchestrating experiences, and engineering perceptions? Where does sound fit in the larger design and branding world? Who’s using audio to affect change in interesting ways?

This initial podcast is the first of a multi-part conversation I recently had Martyn Ware of The Human League, Heaven 17, Illustrious, Sonic ID and more. In this conversation we’ll hear about some of Martyn’s recent work and his use of three-dimensional sound to impact perceptions and behaviors.

For what it’s worth: this is a prototype effort…no fancy sound effects or background music. I’ve recorded the call in Skype. It’s just 20 minutes simple conversation; the value’s in the content. If you like it, come back next week. If you have comments or suggestions, much appreciated.

> > Listen to the podcast now. (MP3, 22 minutes)

Enjoy.

– Noel Franus

Taking a brief departure from the land of identity to stray a tad off-topic…

Shh! Said the Billboard

Really like the decibel-o-meter that’s part of the latest AEG Electrolux campaign. You drive by and a sound-sensing billboard (supposedly) measures the current decibel levels on the street. All in an effort to remind you exactly how silent their vacuum cleaners are. As Marcel at The Amber Theatre points out, it’s brilliant because it’s a show-don’t-tell idea that inherently communicates.

Conducting computers in real-time

Ge Wang conducts the Stanford Laptop Orchestra. 20 laptops, six channels each for a total of 120 channels of sound…with fully live performances. Nifty. Here’s a tee-vee news piece on the group.

Yes We Can! Answer! The! Phone! 

And finally, just when you thought your Friday couldn’t get any possibly giddier, along comes Slate and their fresh batch of political ringtones featuring Hillary, Obama and McCain. Sure, this is tongue-in-cheek, but I see this as a great new tool in the war on terrorism; endless exposure to that “Hillary cackle” ringtone is guaranteed to make any terrorist wilt. (Quick! Free cellphones for the Taliban! Hehehe.)

Happy weekend.

– Noel Franus 

Photo by chuckp

If you’ve visited New Orleans, you know it doesn’t take too much wandering around to soak in the city’s sonic identity. It’s not something you can encapsulate in the form of a five-second audio logo, or even in one particular song or style of music for that matter.

I was fortunate enough to live there for a few years in the early 90’s. My head overflows with audio postcards when I drift back. Funky brass bands. Dixieland jazz. Funky blues. Cajun, zydeco, boogie-woogie piano, you get the picture.

You’ll hear all this walking the city in one day, but you’ll also likely take in the audio apparition of tankers and barges heading down the Mississippi just over the levee. Or the constant grind of streetcars, which can be felt in living rooms that are blocks away. Then there’s the rooster-hour hose-down of the Quarter’s streets, followed by a chorus of shopkeepers’ brooms as the city’s washed anew for just one more day. It’s a sonic collage that you’ll experience nowhere else on earth.

If you’re a fan of American music, you have this city to thank for sparking so much of the music we love today — New Orleans is the Giving Tree to which Rock often returns. And yet there’s more than music…that urban soundscape…that creates and reinforces our perceptions of a place most unique.

– Noel Franus

You may have noticed that the logo over there on the right side of the page is different. As of this spring I’m no longer with Elias Arts — I’ve teamed up with Martyn Ware and Dan Kirby of Sonic ID.

Life at Elias was outstanding—both the process and the people. Together we took giant steps in bolstering the strategic side of sonic branding and identity. Rayan, Fritz and Susan were especially stellar teammates in our regular efforts to push, twist, squeeze and pull the boundaries of brand-based sound, and in creating new sources of value for our clients. Many thanks, friends, for allowing me into your lives…I’ll see you in New York.

Sonic ID is my next adventure. I’m thrilled to join Martyn and Dan, who have been devising jaw-dropping work for BP, HSBC and AT&T (acronyms aplenty) out of the London office since 2004. We’re taking our collective branding / strategy / experience-design / composition / sound-design / and-yes-pop-star smarts and using them to grow Sonic ID in both North America and Europe.

The official pitch: Sonic ID offers strategic planning and creative development for global brands. We assist clients in identifying their opportunities with sonic branding, and we create sonic identity systems that unify a brand’s experience across its mediascape.

The parenthetical pitch: this is new territory for most companies, so I’ll unofficially recommend three relatively painless points of entry for curious organizations: 1) sonic experience auditing; 2) brand ideation and concepting; and 3) three-dimensional soundscape creation for retail, corporate, institutional and public spaces, events and experiences. Contact me if you’d like to learn more.

And on that note I’ll wrap it up.. Coming soon: a podcast interview with Martyn Ware. Our topic: sound design as a tool for change. Very interesting stuff, stay tuned.

– Noel Franus

News flash: fellow Sonic ID compadre Martyn Ware and I will be speaking at Syngery, the Design Management Institute’s Brand/Design 20 Conference. Dates: June 11-13, 2008 in Cincinnati. Topic: Demystifying Sonic Branding and Identity. We’re grateful for the opportunity, and given the line-up — with leaders from Marriott, Starbucks, Kodak, etc. on board — we can’t wait to attend. Looking forward to seeing you there.

– Noel Franus

The Singing Revolution looks like a hit — this is the story of 30,000 Estonians who quite literally sang their way to freedom. Matt Zoller Seitz of the The New York Times sums it up best:

“Imagine the scene in ‘Casablanca’ in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of ‘The Singing Revolution’.”

Coming soon to a theater near you…

I’ve written another sonic branding / audio identity feature for the AIGA: “Sound Value: Creating an Audio Identity for Cisco.” It’s a case study, so there’s a bit more meat in it than some of the introductory pieces I’ve offered in the past.

I’m excited. As part of the vendor team, it’s clear to me that Cisco has some tremendous opportunities to leverage sound in ways that few companies can.

The creation of a systemic plan that accommodates Cisco and its wide brand portfolio — including Linksys, WebEx, Scientific Atlanta — means Cisco understands their opportunity isn’t to thoughtlessly infest our world with sonic logos, noisy ads and cute ringtones, but to increase brand linkage and emotional depth across these touchpoints in ways that visuals cannot or do not.

Looking forward to hearing this evolve.

– Noel Franus

Motorola seeks a haptics expert — someone skilled in sound and touch interfaces — to work on digital devices. Broad visibility, interesting problems, bright people. More in this PDF. Know anyone? Contact Elisa Vargas, Consumer eXperience Design, Product Centric User Interface Manager at Motorola: elisa dot vargas at motorola dot com.

Continuing in the spirit of keeping it light this week, I’m obligated to point you to the Song Chart Meme photo pool over at flickr.

Now you finally know how Michael Jackson and Prince begin their songwriting process…

Happy weekend,

NF

Grandma gave our daughter a Hanna Montana musical greeting card for Valentine’s Day. You don’t know “earworm” till you’ve been through this. (I curse you little Hannah girl and the Hallmark house you live in.)

The Gap’s Sound of Color project has assigned five bands/musicians a color. They make music to reflect that color. Novel, though perhaps not as intriguing as Concrete’s Color of My Sound, an online experiment in collaborative synesthesia.

I’ve recently been asked to provide examples of well-executed sonic branding for article. As you can imagine, I have my criteria and my answer — and if you comb through this site it’s easy enough to read my mind — but I’m curious about you: how do you define effective sonic branding? Let me know…we may see a longer post devoted to this topic in the near future.

And finally: I can’t stand jingles. But this mash-up from The Office and YouTube is too good to pass up; “Andy,” an office worker, is stumped on the final line of a catchy candy catch-phrase. One brave internet soul had a little fun with it — click video for more.

Enjoy the weekend.

Roger Dooley has an interesting piece on music and neuromarketing over at FutureLab. He touches on non-music aspects of audio branding, which is somewhat divergent from and certainly more valuable than a traditional, cursory piece on audio branding. Dooley specifically calls out Nokia:

They have always offered a unique walkie-talkie feature which lets fellow Nextel users initiate a conversation instantly by pushing one button. While most cell features let the user choose from a range of sounds or ringtones, Nextel did something smart: every Nextel phone emits a distinctive chirp when in walkie-talkie mode. This chirp is unique and instantly recognizable by any other Nextel user. They have incorporated the chirp into their TV commercials, and one hears it often in public. This powerful auditory branding message cost Nextel nothing other than the courage to keep the sound consistent across phone styles and generations, and to not let users easily change it.

Russell Davies has a jaw-droppingly thorough play-by-play and heady commentary on the new Sound Art book by by Alan Licht. Here’s a snip from the book, called out on Davies’ site:

Morton Feldman, after a discussion with Brian O’Doherty concluded: “…Between categories is a defining characteristic of sound art, its creators historically coming to the form from different disciplines and often continuing to work in music and/or different media. But in the last decade sound art’s identity between categories has intensified, particularly as the term itself has spread. Eno’s ideal sound installation is ‘a place poised between a club, a gallery, a church, a square, and a park, and sharing aspects of all of these.’ “

Conference watch (revised): speaking of design “between categories,” one of the more intriguing new conferences on my horizon has to be 5D: The Future of Immersive Design, this October at Cal State, Long Beach. (Originally scheduled for April.)

From the agenda: “This international conference assembles the design world’s leading pioneers and academics in an open exchange of ideas and insights about new design processes and the delivery of the immersive experience.”

If the topics of “narrating space,” “gestural interfaces for cinema,” or “the future of sound” don’t pique your interest, then perhaps we should talk. Do we even know each other anymore?

Finally, since we’re on the topic of conferences, I’m planning some travel for 2008 and am curious: which single business, design or media conference is your must-attend event for 2008? Why?

Give your answer here (at LinkedIn) or in the comments field below. Thanks.

– Noel Franus

It’s a new year in a nascent industry — no better time to address the opportunities and challenges we face as an industry in the coming year. That’s what I’m exploring in this piece. Note that these are, naturally, my opinions only. I speak for no one else. These ramblings may, in fact, be simple projections of what I want rather than what I expect. If you think so, call me on it. And by all means join the party by adding your own predictions to the forecast.

Put the needle on the record:

Ask around: what exactly is audio branding? Audio identity? Sonic branding? Sonic identity? Visit the websites for ten different firms and get ten different answers. This gumbo of offerings slows industry growth and dampens the market; prospective clients don’t buy products or services they can’t understand, and a fuzzy value proposition equates to longer lead times. Nobody wants that.

Brand consultancies, sound-design production houses and equipment resellers offer very different services, and shouldn’t be mistaken for one another. Online, however, it’s difficult to tell the difference between these three — or any huckster with a copy of Garage Band and a website, for that matter. Future clients who are researching this field shouldn’t have to sort it out. That’s up to us.

What’ll it take to grow a shared understanding of our practice? A common language. Best practices. Case studies. Measurement. ROI. It’ll be messy, but it all starts with conversation and community. This year we will see a lot more of that — both in face-to-face forums and online.

No doubt about it, this is a highly creative field. But to ignore or downplay the business case for sonic branding is to miss the full equation. Brand-based audio assets are financial assets that grow in value — especially when deployed as part of a sonic identity system that allows multiple touchpoints to reinforce one another. They create economies of scale. And they build recognition, awareness and preference of and for a brand, which translates to monetary value.

That’s just the short list. It’s up to us to continuously position the benefits of audio identity and sonic branding on financial terms. Service providers who speak the language of business will move this industry forward.

Doesn’t it seem that today most common issue regarding audio and interactive media is limited to the question of “shouldn’t your have audio on your website?” Ack. There is no didactic, prescriptive answer, is there? And more importantly, doesn’t this miss the bigger questions of: 1) would/could/should/how can audio augment the user experience?; and 2) how can it link to or reinforce other brand initiatives — how can it work harder for the brand?

The digital marketplace is huge — and still growing. There’s a lot more to digital media strategy than just asking just a few pedestrian questions. Those who understand the right questions are more likely to become a client’s strategic partner rather than a mere provider of content.

Have you noticed an uptick in the conversation — at least online in the last six months — about the role of sound at the product level? Methinks this is bound to continue gathering steam, and my expectation is that the buzz will expand beyond traditional “sound UI” and sound design for products.

Retail environments, public places and physical spaces are becoming increasingly more important in the relationship between people and brands. The high-value opportunity for audio/sonic branding firms isn’t in providing just bleeps, blips and soundtracks for these experiences (late in the creative process) but in the broader consultative role of experience designer, director, producer, and curator for brand-based, audio-intensive experiences. We will see Design Thinking (yes, with a capital D and T) move to the forefront in 2008.

What happened when the studio musician, the sonar expert and the ethnomusicologist walked into a bar? We have no idea. It’s never happened, but you can bet the conversation would be an ear-opener. This lack of collaboration is unfortunate given that most other design disciplines have found a way to work across typical boundaries to create create compelling products and in fact address some of humanity’s grander challenges.

Take, for example, the Hippo Water Roller or Design for Democracy. These innovative efforts came about via collaborations among industrial designers, architects, design researchers, visual designers, and so on. This is very much the IDEO or Archeworks model: pick a problem, throw a variety of skills into the mix, and see what happens.

Today, though, most sound-based specialties generally live in isolation of one another. And rarely do they work in meaningful, game-changing ways with other design disciplines to address social concerns.

This, too, will change in 2008. I’m not sure if this will be a competition, an event, or some other forum. But I am sure that we have a lot to learn from one another, and that we’ll all be much better off leveraging each others’ strengths — people in need benefit from the solutions derived from such work, and down the road, brands benefit from the innovation process that ensues.

There you have it for the future of audio identity in 2008. At least in one man’s eyes and ears. Now let’s see what’s buzzing in your brain…comments, ideas, and constructive feedback encouraged. I’m all ears.

– Noel Franus

Happy new year! This past year has been a remarkable 365 days for those of us in the business of audio branding, sonic branding and audio identity. In 2007, colleagues and clients alike have fortunately expressed expectations well beyond the level of novelty…interest and money isn’t going into audio branding because it’s cool or new. It’s going into audio branding because sound is increasingly understood as a valuable tool for communicating a brand and its intentions.

Why? As you know, things are changing. Where, how and what brands communicate is something we all thought we’ve had figured out for the last sixty-plus years (it’s in advertising and on the sales floor, right?) but now that our world has become increasingly fragmented and our media ever more one-to-one, all we know for sure is that nothing’s for sure. People don’t watch as much TV as they used to. Product experiences drive perceptions. Personal, mobile media is both the present and the future, yet most of us barely even know what that means, really.

Brands that must stay front of mind understand that having a well-constructed audio brand strategy provides a comprehensive, cover-your-bets approach to future brand identification and communication. Some of the reasons why are probably familiar to you by now: music, sound, voice and silence can alter behaviors in ways that nothing else can; sound communicates when and where visuals can’t; unique, proprietary sounds are unforgettable (in ways we can’t escape, like it or not); and music is an ideal vehicle for audience/customer engagement and collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, music can communicate in mere moments what words, images and visuals often take minutes or longer to achieve.

The list of benefits goes on, but the takeaway is simple: the delivery and consumption of media will always be in flux. And brand-savvy companies looking to create meaning amidst the cacaphony must leverage every tool in their toolbox for doing so.

I’m thrilled to have worked, in 2007, with brands that get this. It’s not even that they’re the most innovative among peer brands (though, of course, they are ;-); it’s that they have their act together well enough to see the future, understand it somewhat, and plan for it now. Those that can’t or don’t do the same will be left scrambling. (I don’t quite know, yet, what the sound of scrambling is, but I can assure you that it’s not pleasant.)

So there you have it, a last post and the end of the year. If audio branding is your business, too, then I’m sure you’ve experienced this as well. No doubt you’re excited about the new year and beyond.

A new year which, by the way, will kick off with a five-things-to-watch-for-in-2008 piece here at this site. I’ll follow that up in mid-January with the second of a two-part article series at the AIGA Gain website. (The first, Building Brand Value Through the Strategic Use of Sound, provided an introductory overview of audio branding and identity; this upcoming second piece is a real-world, client case-study for a brand we know and love.) All of which will be followed by yet more surprises.

So stay tuned. Get in touch (noel at intentional audio dot com). And keep in touch. Here’s to more good things to come in 2008.

– Noel Franus

Photo by :: Wendy ::

Nordstom to bench its pianists – from the Oregonian:

Come the new year, Nordstrom stores will pipe in popular tunes, instead of continuing to air the live piano notes that have lulled many shoppers for the past 20 years.

The Seattle-based chain said the company is carrying out its hyper-attentive approach to customers, who it said compliment canned music more often than live musicians.

Wow! It’s hard to believe that a store whose differentiator is personal service would take this step. It’s an interesting move that raises a few questions:

1. Has Nordstrom actually measured the financial effect of pianists vs. canned music? The article quotes anecdotal “compliments” favoring the piped-in music, but that’s a specious case. People speak or don’t speak out for various reasons, but the only numbers Nordstrom should be following are the receipt totals of days when pianists are playing vs. canned music. ‘Course we all know the effect of “sophisticated” music and purchase intentions in restaurants…by all means this is something Nordstrom should be exploring.

2. Nordstrom’s cites a cost savings in using a music service over the pianists. I’m surprised that a company with such a strong sense of “brand experience” would use this as a primary argument for nixing the live music — they’re a high-end retailer that understands the value of providing an exceptional experience, even if that experience costs more to provide. Again, run a study and see what turns up.

3. Numbers aside, you just can’t deny the iconic and emotional status of the piano in a Nordstrom’s. As Leonard Lauder, retired chairman and CEO of Estee Lauder said, “A Nordstrom piano doesn’t take up much room. It’s a small idea, but it’s a genius idea.” It’s part of the brand. In fact it’s the closest thing the company has to an associative “brand sound.” Losing this in favor of preprogrammed audio that sounds like, well, every other retailer in North America, makes for a risky move.

Let’s hope it works out for the best. Hey, I’m working on an large, environmental audio-identity effort for one of our clients right now…and if a few pianos are in this client’s future, we know where we can score some on the cheap.

– Noel Franus