In many ways, sonic branding is omnipresent in the modern consumer environment, which is a soundscape full of audio logos and sonic signatures; appliances, apps, automobiles, and advertisements, all announce their presence and reaffirm their purpose with chimes, jingles, and cheerful ear wormy tones.
Everyone agrees that humans have five senses, but most marketers and business owners spend time anguishing over the visual components of their branding, and spend very little if any time considering the benefits of a reverberant audio identity.
Forward thinking brands and agencies recognize the effectiveness and power of sonic branding and embrace voice and music as a fundamental brand communication medium. When it comes to extolling the necessity of emotional connection in advertising, the industry crowd roars in appreciation, but when it comes to outlining the tactical way to achieve such a connection, marketers and business owners are relatively quiet.
Let’s talk about the barriers brands face as they battle for awareness and recognition, define how audio logos aid in this endeavor, and outline the ways sonic branding can work for you.
What are audio logos and sonic branding?
Sound is a universal language, which is why so many popular brands and businesses have adopted audio logos and sonic branding as an integral part of their marketing strategy.
Whether it’s the start-up sounds on an LG appliance or the Netflix app, or a whistle-back jingle on TV for Klondike bars or Liberty Mutual Insurance, sonic branding is at once ubiquitous and at the same time, a secret weapon that builds brand associations in a very indirect way.
So what is an audio logo?
An audio logo is a brand asset, it is not the brand. An audio logo’s primary function is to deliver an emotional signpost to the brand itself. An effective sonic signature facilitates and accelerates attribution, recall, and with luck, propensity to buy.
Why is this important?
The Brand Association/Recall Barrier
Since the modern marketplace is so congested and consumers take in hundreds of branded communications everyday, there is a massive brand recall & association problem in advertising. A compelling commercial might be recalled for everything except the sponsoring brand. And this is even if they SEE your advertisement.
According to research by InfoLinks, only 14% of participants could remember the company associated with the last display ad they saw. If banner blindness is an issue within digital advertising, and brand recall is an issue for mass media, how is the modern marketer supposed to proceed with confidence?
In order to ensure an audience remembers your ad, you should probably create an ad worth remembering. It’s important to get in the brand name early, establish a tone and topical mastery, and tell a compelling story, well. What makes for a compelling ad?
According to findings on advertising effectiveness from Orlando Wood, characteristics that make ads more impactful and connective (characters, dialogue, story arcs, wordplay, cosplay) are being crowded out by features that fall flat and are ineffective (monologue/voiceovers, repetitive/rhythmic audio, abstracted product, big text)
A brand with a solid and well-developed sonic identity can experience significant recall/association uplift. According to advertising research at the Karachi University Business School, jingles in advertising definitely affect retention and recall of an advertised product.
“According to our research,” says Asad Shakil and Dr. Danish Siddiqui, “it can be concluded that jingles play a significant role in advertising. Retention of the product through jingles impose lasting effects in the minds of the customer and results also show that people bought products in the majority of cases due to the retention of the jingle.”
So how does an audio logo, music, and sonic branding enhance associations and memorability?
How audio logos function on memory & improve brand recall
Unlike other senses, sound impacts humans in a very visceral manner, being one of the few sensory experiences based in the physical world. Sound is a physical wave that interacts with our ears, brains, and bodies which is why it is such an effective means of communication. This does not happen with visual, olfactory, or sensual stimulus, only auditory.
Seriously, there are areas within your auditory cortex that are designed to correlate and respond with sound frequencies from the outside world. This is unique only to sound stimuli.
Now that we recognize that melody and sound are experienced in the brain directly, what are the indirect aspects of music that add to memorability? Let’s talk about melody, lyrics, and duration.
MELODY – The vast majority of audio logos on the airwaves today, and throughout history, are melodic and consist of distinguishable tones and patterns. Research shows that more complex melodic shapes result in more singable, easily memorable audio logos.
Here is a visual representation of the different types of melodic structures in audio logos.
LYRICS – Lyrics in audio logos can lift brand recall significantly, though there are stylistic considerations; typically newer sonic logos don’t have lyrics and legacy brands are adapting existing audio logos to have versions with and without lyrics. An effective audio logo combines the lyrical and melodic, giving brands the ability to play with the power of musical association and distinctive brand assets.
DURATION – Four note audio logos are most common but there are plenty of prominent jingles with musical events pushing into the double-digits – think Farmer’s Insurance, or Liberty Mutual. To increase flexibility and placement opportunities, brands produce short and extended versions of their audio logos.
To be successful (and memorable), an audio logo and sonic brand must feel authentic, credible, and personable. Once these attributes are embraced, the appeal, recall, and attribution should follow. What are some examples of brands and industries that use sonic branding and audio logos successfully?
Who is using sonic branding successfully?
When it comes to measuring the impact and proper use of audio logos and sonic branding, there are hundreds of well-known examples and a million different ways to gather & research the data. SoundOut, a sonic branding agency out of the UK, has studied thousands of jingles and sonic branding efforts and codified three ways to measure audio logo impact; Effectiveness, Personality, and Market Penetration.
Effectiveness means the intrinsic quality of a sonic brand, the likability of the audio logo aside from brand connotations. Personality is defined as the communication of branded attributes and the match between the audio and the parent brand. And lastly, and most importantly, market penetration refers to the recognition and attribution within the target audience of an audio logo and brand.
So which industries are using sonic branding, and how do they compare when measuring effectiveness?
It’s clear from this graph that audio logos within the financial industry far outpace other verticals, but one thing is equally evident; the interest in sonic branding is on a dramatic upswing. However, the relative performance of audio logos within these industries varies in significant and important ways.
Sonic branding takeaways
Since sonic branding is a creative act, it can feel like there are no hard and fast rules, which can feel inspiring but also unachievable. Here are some takeaways on sonic branding:
Appeal is massive: Likability and intrinsic appeal have a massive influence on the success of your audio logo.
Distinctive doesn’t mean memorable: According to audio effectiveness research of hundreds of sonic logos from SoundOut, there is a mildly negative correlation between recall and distinctiveness. What does drive recall?
These four attributes drive brand recall: The positive correlation to jingles/audio logos that exhibit traits like, “Welcoming” “Friendly” “Happy” and “Uncomplicated” are massively higher than audio identities linked with traits like “Defiant” “Intense” or “Combative”
Audio logos that include the brand name, improve recall: Seems a little obvious, but jingles and audio logos that vocalize the brand name had a much higher brand recall score (59%) than those that did not (29%).
The Companion Brand: Audio effectiveness market research has revealed the most common combination of Jungian archetypes associated with sonic logos is “Companion/Innocent” which suggests that there is a desire in audiences for brands to appear as trusted friends.
Financial industry embraces audio: It’s no secret that huge brands in finance and insurance have large advertising budgets, which makes the prevalent use of sonic branding within the industry even more interesting. And since the financial industry embraces sonic identity, effectiveness metrics show market penetration is low due to a saturated market. According to research from SoundOut, Mastercard scored in the top quartile for effectiveness, but the bottom quartile for attribution.
Brand associations boost perceived appeal: Fun brands like Nintendo and Playstation experience measurable brand uplift when testing their sonic identity, which means effectiveness of audio logos can be significantly linked to brand associations.
Sonic branding + Pavlovian conditioning: Just like in Pavlov’s famous bell ringing/dog drooling experiments, sound association and memory are intricately linked in our brains. When audiences make a connection between a brand and an audio logo, the sonic identity becomes a trigger that releases emotional responses and associations with the parent brand. This important connection between recall and attribution cannot be overstated.
Putting audio logos and sonic branding to work
The core purpose of an audio logo is to consistently connect emotion to a brand to ensure strong recall within your addressable audience. However, there is a lot of strategic planning that goes into the proper implementation of a sonic branding initiative.
Without recall and attribution, any efforts to ingratiate your brand with any distinctive assets within a community, will fall flat.
Having a sonic brand or audio logo is one thing, but implementing and rolling out these distinct assets to an audience is a whole other ball of wax. Agencies and clients alike have experienced this frustration with a new campaign or project; the idea is great, the strategy is there, it’s in the execution where things get hairy.
Here is a short list of all the potential entry points for audio logos and sonic branding;
on-hold, telecommunications
In-app intro screens
Appliance boot-up announcement/invocation
TV commercials, presentations, videos
In-store or overhead music in locations
Podcast audio real-estate
Radio ads
Social audio – Spaces, Clubhouse
Smart speakers – Alexa Skills, Flash Briefs
Audiobooks
Audio content marketing (audio blogs, audiograms)
And much more….the only limit is your imagination!
The ultimate goal of sonic branding is to increase the perceived value in the products/services a brand sells. If an audio logo cannot be easily attributed to a brand, ie. the consumer has no idea who owns the brand asset, then the whole concept falls apart.
If you want a clear picture on audio logo effectiveness, you have to measure reaction; the recall, appeal, and propensity to buy your brand have to be aided and enhanced by the audio logo. If not, it’s time to head back to the manuscript paper.
Want more? Check out our blog on how to create an audio identity for your brand. Want us to do the work? Get in touch!
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