Sonic Marketing: A growing NECESSITY.

How Sonic Branding is SUPERSEDING the Visual Identity

As marketers you’ve been taught early that visuals are everything in branding, but have you thought about how your brand sounds?

Having a sonic brand is as vital to your marketing as having a visual identity, and the necessity is growing. 

When you hear the term 'sonic branding,’ you may first think of audio logos like the HBO sound, or a catchy jingle. But having a robust sonic package will help guide your marketing strategy in more ways than you may realize. For example, let's say you have a company that sells a high-end skincare product line. Your target audience is women between the ages of 30-50 who value luxury and self care. By creating a sonic package that includes calming, soothing music, and a voiceover that emphasizes luxury, you can create an emotional connection with your target audience and enhance their overall experience with your brand.

In this example, if your ads use calming music that matches the ambiance of a spa and the makeup counter line that demos your product uses this same music, this creates a sensory experience that is not only pleasant but also reinforces the idea that your brand is a luxury product that promotes self care.

Sound designs should be purposeful. They reflect across all of the brand’s public touchpoints: in-store, headquarters, social media, ad campaigns, product packaging, etc. 

We can argue that audio is evolving to become more important than visual branding—at least in the current state of media consumption. Social audio platforms, such as Clubhouse, Discord, and Twitter Spaces, are growing in popularity and are entirely aural-based without the use of any images. Additionally, as the demand for voice command features grow, brands need to consider that hands-free product engagements increase the likelihood of users multitasking; decreasing the probability that they’re even looking at the devices while engaging with them.

“with the demand in voice command features growing, brands will need to consider that hands-free product engagements mean an increase in the likelihood of users multitasking, and decrease the probability that they’re even looking at devices while engaging with them.”

Still not convinced? Socialmediatoday.com emphasizes the importance of audio in your branding mix, stating that:

“Distinctive brand sounds are 8x stronger for brand recall, compared to other elements like slogans and logos.” 

Once you have your audio theme worked out, there are a few ways that your sonic identity will trickle—setting the foundation—for your other marketing efforts.

Distinct Sound Bites

A distinct sound bite helps brands break through the clutter. In the age of social media and podcasts, the best sounds win. Developing a unique sound bite allows brands to reach consumers in more ways than visual assets can. For example, consider the trending audio clips in til Tok and how those could be used to reach new audiences.
Or the potential for your brand sound to be so recognizable, like the universally recognized sound of receiving a FB or iPhone message.

TheFashionLaw.com released an article on sonic trademarks, referring to them as “the new frontier within fashion branding.”

“...many brands – from Amazon, Audi, and Elon Musk’s Hyperloop to Jergens, Gilette, and Wayfair – are working on distinctive sound bites to help cement themselves in the minds of consumers.”

This especially holds true as social media platforms breakaway from still-visuals to boosting algorithms in favor of moving visuals and audio. Especially in the case of TikTok, starting with designing your core audio sound, helps you better and more quickly understand what sound bites to create that match your brand personality. Is your brand authentic? Is it happy? Is it geeky? How do you best convey that in a shareable sound bite?

Audio-Centric Activations

Multi-sensory marketing has been a hot topic for a while. It has been credited for creating longer-lasting, and richer brand recall ability. This article from EventMarketer.com highlights five ways that brands have used audio in their marketing activations. My personal favorite is Valspar’s use of paint colors connected to sound bowls.

By the way, like the above example, multi-sensory marketing can easily be re-created as an ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) video for social content. ASMR videos are ones that stimulate a physical response in the body from the top of the head to our toes. ASMR videos have been a growing trend since 2019, especially on video-based platforms such as Tiktok, and we expect to see it continue to grow. If your marketing team can come up with ways to tie your product or brand to ASMR content, consumers will likely better engage with your brand online. Spotify has tons of ASMR playlists and our sound team can help you design ASMR sounds and ideas unique to your brand (what to whisper, types of rainfall sounds, etc.). The possibilities are endless.

Which is a great segue into my next point…

Audio & Social Media

One of the fastest growing social media platforms is TikTok. More so than any other platform, Tiktok is heavily reliant and thrives on audio. 

Regardless of if your brand is yet to dive into TikTok, social virality in 2022 is more often tied to audio, whether that be by means of VO trends, music, sounds, or video narration. 

If you’re wanting to create custom sounds and don’t know where to start, trendpop.social releases a list of “Viral Sounds For the Week,” with examples of how the sounds are being used. Together, we can work on how to leverage sounds that are already trending, while also creating unique sounds and audio that fit with your brand and could possibly start the next viral trend.

Music and Brands

Whether you’re needing a track for your ad or a track for the launch of your brand’s podcast, you’ll want to consider whether the sound fits within your audio identity package. Is the music hip? Is it smart? Is it grandeur? Will it resonate with your target audience? The track you select is very important because this tune can often become synonymous with your product or brand and is unlikely to be forgotten (we still remember the MSN Messenger sound years after its demise). In other words, this is not something you’d want to skimp with the use of generic library music. 

Choosing to focus on a sonic branding segment as part of your branding or marketing strategy can quickly provide you with a competitive advantage, recognition in more than just a name, and a way to remain relevant as the digital age continues to expand. Sound should be considered an essential fact of your branding architecture. You may have developed a strong method for how brands see you, but it’s time for you to think about what they hear. 

Interested in learning more about how you can develop an incredibly unique sound for your brand? Let’s chat.