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

• 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

The world’s atwitter over Muxtape. My friends at Mule and Substance suggest it’s the next sliced bread, but I’m still kicking the tires waiting to be really wowed. (Update: wow factor increases with use.) Nonetheless, your humble DJ Franux has given it hist best global-blues-funkytown mix — check it out or give it a spin and make your own. Happy Friday.

– 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

Photo by CoffeeGeek

Thinking this morning about sound and cognition in physical spaces. Yes, countless studies on sound and purchase behavior in retail environments await the curious, but let’s toss all that aside for a moment.

What’s on my mind today isn’t commerce per se, but the impact of the secondary players in our audioscape. In other words, this isn’t about the background music in a busy coffeeshop (which is unfortunately what conversations on sound in physical environments is often limited to) but the specific din of the La Marzocco humming away industriously, the chatter among patrons, the cha-ching of the cash register and the impact of these on our perceptions.

Can you imagine, for instance, how you might think differently about that coffeeshop if it took away its hardworking espresso machine out of sight or somewhere less audible? Might as well be an antiques shop, a church hall or a used books store in that case. Things go awry when our audio cues don’t match expectations. And this forces other environmental cues to work that much harder to achieve the notion of perceptive “fit” and appropriateness.

Envision a visit to New Orleans without the calliope pipes chirping away on the riverside (no thanks). A waltz through Manhattan without audible traffic (thumbs up). Or a visit to the dentist without those imposing teeth-grinding machines (way up). While these aren’t signature sounds, they’re experiential ingredients that for better or worse are part of our world. And some of them are things we can actually control.

Today (at least) I’m not alone in this meandering. Came across this New York Times piece on the role of phone conversations in a busy office: The Office Phone Call Was Music to Their Ears (registration required). In short: a busy office just doesn’t feel very busy or dynamic without all that sonic energy in the air. (Blame email and take-the-call-anywhere cell phones.)

You know where I’m headed. Today’s closing question can’t be anything other than: what primary and secondary sounds add to or detract from the places and spaces you interact with today? How? Why? What if our typical, expected sounds were subverted in some way to sound like things they’re not?

One more for you branding nuts: how are your customer’s real-world experiences working for or against intended brand perceptions? And which among those can be intentionally designed? For example, I’ll riff on the dentist-drill example; dentists work feverishly to produce a calming environment, get you relaxed, keep you happy. But then halfway through the visit that noisy beast inevitably rears its ugly head. Using a softer, gentler tool would be one step in the right direction.

Granted, it’s a small step, but those little things can add up. Together, they comprise this thing we call an “experience.” And as any of us interested in directing, producing or creating experiences knows, sometimes those little things matter.

Related reading: The Soundscape; Our Sonic Environment and The Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer. Enjoy.

Update: should you happen to find yourself in Belgium, check out Displaced Sounds in Leuven this Thursday March 13: “Expect unexpected sounds, exciting evenings where listening and hearing are the keywords.” More.

– 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

Someone beat me to it…

Japan’s Melody Roads Play Music as You Drive

Motorists used to listening to the radio or their favourite tunes on CDs may have a new way to entertain themselves, after engineers in Japan developed a musical road surface.

A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of “melody roads”, which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.

The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.

Sunday sharing: last night I came across a very enjoyable piece by Bill Mckibben in the Atlantic on the joys of internet radio and the problems with satellite radio. Snip:

It’s so nice to be able to easily listen to what real American radio remains. My tabletop pulls in nearly every public-radio station in America, meaning that the great talk shows on dozens of stations…are always in range…

Satellite radio…is a glorified airline entertainment system—hundreds of channels signifying next to nothing. Signifying next to nothing because satellite comes from nowhere. Just like the Clear Channel stations, it surrenders the thing that makes radio so magical: connection to a community. As a rough rule of thumb, the smaller the community at which a signal is aimed, the more interesting the radio—it scales down better than it scales up.

Personally, I can’t help but think of satellite vs. internet as Taco Bell vs. San Francisco Mission burritos, or Budweiser vs. any local craft/micro brew. I’m glad Mckibben included a collection of his favorite radio links as I’m always looking for more.

I’m a slave to WWOZ New Orleans, KEXP Seattle and KCRW Santa Monica, among others. But I have to admit that managing my listening via iTunes or bookmarks isn’t as simple as I’d like, so I’m also grateful to Mckibben for mentioning his Acoustic Energy internet/wi-fi radio.

Wait, did someone say wi-fi radio? Christmas is right around the corner, right? This gives me an idea…

Here are four late-night links for the always-curious sonic-branding nut in each of us. Some of these may seem to be from left field, but there’s always something to learn. How can you apply some of the innovations/ideas/thinking that’s referenced below to your (or your client’s) brand/product experience?

The remote you’ve been waiting for
Dolby offers a new TV-volume leveler that actually sounds kinda interesting. Wild prediction: customers will love it, advertisers not so much. How long before Microsoft buys them out?

The music tool you’ve been waiting for?
Yamaha’s Tenori-On…it’s been out for a while, and I’ve avoided it because of its high-gimmick factor. (It’s very hard to believe anyone who pitches their “digital music instrument for the 21st century.”) But most reviews of the Tenori-On have been positive…so what gives? If you’ve played with this (perhaps at the MusicLive Show in Birmingham?), please share your thoughts.

The chair you’ve got to hear to believe
From Networked Music Review: “the Sound Chair begins as a sound that is precisely crafted to form the physical shape of a chair when visualized as a 3-dimensional object using a volume, time, frequency line plot. The life-size chair is an exact replica of the soundwave graph. The result is a product with dual existence as both a ’sound’ & a ‘chair.’”

The noise you won’t forget
Making Noise in NYC features “work by visual artists who utilize the many different modes by which sound is produced and received. Exploring the possibilities that lie within the relationship between producer and receiver, these artists demonstrate how the manipulation of sound can become a tool for the organization of power and, in turn, the subversion of it.” November 28, 2007 – January 2, 2008 at the Melville Gallery at the South Street Seaport Museum.

– Noel Franus

Ruth Simmons has an excellent piece on emotions and music at Brandchannel.com.

I’ve always defined the practice of audio identity and sonic branding as “the intentional use of music, sound, voice and silence to create a cognitive and emotional connection between people and organizations.”

Sure, I think that definition covers it, but Simmons’ piece expands on this in graceful, grokkable form. It’s valuable thinking as we grow this practice, this market, this business of choreographing brand perceptions through the strategic use of sound.

– Noel Franus

I was flipping through Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia — a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between who we are and what we hear — and noticed an entire chapter devoted to the power of earworms, those catchy audio mnemonics that we sometimes can’t get out of our heads.

The chapter, and much of the book, focuses on rare, intriguing neurological conditions. But with respect to earworms, Sacks touches on something that affects just about everyone: our inherent need for structure, form, and repetition in our music. In a way, we practically invite the earworm into our lives.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition. Every piece of classical music has its repeat marks or variations on a theme, and our greatest composers are masters of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to the repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.

You read vulnerability; some among us (ahem) understand that as an “opportunity.” And others, still, (ahem again) see this as a “challenge.” It’s both. And the art and science of leveraging this awareness of sound — for commercial and social purposes — is something we’ll hear about with increasing frequency in the near future.

– Noel Franus

Well, there you have it. As much as I promised myself I’d stay away from writing about today’s Apple coverage — there’s more than enough coverage out there besides this li’l blog — I just can’t help it. Here’s why:

Today a computer company and a coffee company agreed on a deal sell music together. Or, put another way, two significant lifestyle brands extended their reach beyond their core businesses to provide more of what people want, in the easiest possible delivery system.

Under the new deal, wi-fi enabled iPods will sense when a Starbucks is in range, and provide instant access to that store’s playlist via the iTunes music store. Like that Feist with your latte? It’s yours now — but it at the counter or download instantly with just a few clicks.

Personally, I don’t think this particular deal is incredible, nor do I think this will affect my life in any significant way. (I’m a tad more hyped about the “low-tech” 80g iPod classique.) But this isn’t about me — what this signals from a branding perspective is interesting when you peel back the onion.

I mention the “computer company” and “coffee company” because most of us have a very hard time envisioning our brands being successful at something so far away from primary core offerings. IBM is still in the PC business, McDonald’s is still about food (for the most part) and AT&T is (still) in the telco business. For the little computer company from Cupertino and the original Pike’s Place Market Starbucks coffeeshop to be where they are today takes a visionary understanding and management of one’s brand and its trajectory and an ultra-keen sense of our relationship with music and sound…we’re people with ears and money to burn.

Oh, and it takes a boatload of cahones to pull it all off as successfully as these brands have. Kudos to them for seeing what others don’t see, and for building what others can’t or don’t. Reminds me of a little commercial we scored for Apple a while back. You may know it:

Enough with the hyperbole. Next question for another time: what on God’s green earth is holding Apple up from offering contactless payments via iPhone? You buy your coffee, you wave your iPod, your payment is done. Suddenly, my life is affected in a very significant way. C’mon, it can’t be that far off, can it?

What happens when a law firm commissions its own anthem, only to rescind it later? A tale of corporate devotionals and brand management gone awry.

Photo credit: lilbear

The world of psychoacoustics is heating up lately, not only in our specific audio-branding field of work, but in the larger public sphere as well — it’s a topic that coworkers and friends alike seem to enjoy. Fortunately writers like Daniel Levitin and a handful of others are exploring the music-mind connection in a more approachable way than we’ve seen before. And now you or I no longer need a PhD to understand a little about the brain’s response to sound. We just need a sense of curiosity and a library card.

So, for those of you who are, indeed, curious and have a few bucks (or that library card), Oliver Sacks’ latest work is sure to please. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain is due in the US this fall. Sneak preview:

“Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species.”

Audio bonus: the New Yorker has a 10-minute audio overview (MP3). Give it a listen and enjoy.

It’s Friday — I’m turning off my brain and enjoying the music.

Six Degrees Records has a new release featuring the stirring vocals of ten-years-deceased Qawalli superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan set to new dub-reggae tracks by electronica-dub-mixoligist Gaudi.

The combination, called Dub Qawwali, is chilling but chill-out; familiar yet newly intriguing; global and western; and utterly addictive. I’ve been listening to it all week, and it’s worth passing the word.

Over at sixdegreesrecords.com they’re offering a free song download (it’s one of the best on the album) plus obviously the full album via download or CD. Enjoy.

(PS — just found an NPR story, airing today, on the project. Includes the fascinating story on the effort and an interview with Gaudi…who clearly had his work cut out for him. The word is out.)

I have to admit I’m sometimes a snob when it comes to what to discuss here at the site: concepts like the power of music or the power of sound aren’t exactly my value-add, given that there are plenty of experts (musicians, academics, etc.) already discussing these things, and they’re usually far more articulate than me. Dabble as I may, I usually try to avoid going there.

So I write about what I know: the strategic use of sound to build brand value — the careful mapping of the what, where, when, why, how (and sometimes even the how much) companies can and should use sound to leverage the woefully untapped relationship between people and sound. Depending on the client’s situation, strategy engagements can cover brand strategy, market research, customer research/ethnography, usability testing, and plenty of workshopping. And that’s even before we get to the sound itself; unlike the sometimes spontaneous act of creating music for art’s sake, this is a matter of planning, of discovering where you want to go and charting an intentional course for getting there.

If you’re still with me, you’re of a like mind. And you may very well appreciate the value that an account planner brings to an advertisement; the value a conductor brings to a performance; or the value an architect brings to the built environment. It’s not always necessarily the difference between failure and success — but it’s often the difference between success and grand success.

I recently came across one of John Groves’ Brand Sounds podcasts, out of Hamburg, and was delightfully suprised to find that Groves is, without a doubt, of a like mind as well. I’ll stay strictly on-topic here — no chit-chat about NPR or water gurglers of the Amazon — and point you to a recent Brand Sounds vidcast in which Groves expands on the comparable relationship between “sound strategy” and architects. Enjoy — and thanks to Groves for spreading the gospel of audio identity.