The importance of Sonic Branding

Can you sing this for me?

“ba da ba ba ba, I’m lovin’ it” 

What? Does it sound like…

McDonald’s?

‘I’m lovin’ it’ is not only the longest-running slogan of any brand but a perfect example of an excellent use of sonic branding.

What is Sonic Branding?

Sonic branding (also called audio branding, sound branding, or acoustic branding) is the sound of your brand. It is the use of sound to reinforce your brand identity like these for Playstation, these for Windows, this for Nokia, this for Intel, and this for McDonald’s.

Sonic branding is about building a relationship between the product and its target market through the latter’s ears, fulfilling the role that a national anthem plays to a country or a hymn plays to a religion. – Daniel Jackson, managing director of Cutting Edge Commercial.

Even though these sound like mere mnemonics, jingles or sound effects, they carry huge emotional and exclusive value and connect with the brand as much as their visual equivalents do (even more).

Your sonic branding connects to your brand just like “Happy birthday to you” song connects to birthday and “We wish you a Merry Christmas” to Christmas.

The impact of sound on the brain

Sound is capable of producing powerful reactions in the listener - whether it's a sudden cold sweat caused by a snake's warning hiss, or the uncontrollable grin as a favourite song from our youth comes on the radio. Scholars have been fascinated by the relationship between sound and emotional states since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks (whose wild Dionysian parties could be seen as the equivalent of a modern-day rave!), and modern neuroscience has led to some fascinating advances in our understanding of why our ears and emotions have such a strong bond.

Neuroscientists have linked a number of brain regions with our emotional responses to sound. These include:

• Thalamus - Relays sensory data and helps regulate sleep
• Cerebellum - Refines motor functions and is associated with learning
• Hippocampus - Inhibits behaviour and helps form memories
• Amygdala - Processes memories and emotional reactions
• Prefrontal cortex - Linked to personality and critical decision-making
• Insular cortex - Regulates heartbeat and is connected to empathy, pain and social awareness 
• Broca's area - Affects language comprehension and generation

A 2009 report from Sweden's Lund University put forward six psychological mechanisms through which emotions may be produced when the brain reacts to sound.

1. Brain stem reflex:When the acoustic characteristics of the sound (eg loud or dissonant) signal a "potentially important and urgent event", causing us to react on an instinctive level.
2. Evaluative conditioning:When an emotion is elicited by sound because we have heard it repeatedly in a certain setting, leading to an association between sound and setting.
3. Emotional contagion:When we perceive the emotion expressed by a piece of music: the music doesn't necessarily sound sad, but rather we recognise it as expressing sadness.
4. Visual imagery:When the structure of a piece of music makes us imagine certain scenes or sensations, such as a rising melody connecting with the sensation of moving upwards.
5. Episodic memory:Also known as the "Darling, they're playing our tune" phenomenon - when a particular sound or piece of music evokes a powerful memory.
6. Music expectancy:This is tied to our experiences with music: for instance, an unfamiliar variation on a standard note progression like may cause feelings of surprise and curiosity.

Of these mechanisms, the authors stated that the first two are in-born reactions, the second two develop during the first few years of our lives, and the last two tend to be learned during childhood and later life.

In the battle for customers, brands have long engaged the senses in order to create unique and identifiable properties they can own in the minds of their customers. All brands strategically or otherwise set-out to own a concept of what they stand for. Usually this is the first point of differentiation as it combines the intent to stand for something uniquely different to their competitors. Secondly most brands consider their visual assets; brand identity, packaging, web sites, digital and traditional advertising, retail environments, etc. For some brands the senses of smell and taste also offer the possibility for developing unique and ownable properties (think FMCG and food and wine brands especially). And then there’s sound.

For decades brands have been developing unique sound tracks through advertising jingles. If you’re a contemporary consumer you’ve almost certainly found yourself humming a tune only to realize it’s from an ad campaign. But beyond that, brand have begun looking at ways to create ownable sounds that are closely connected to the experience of using or consuming their products. Pringles and Yarra Valley fruit juice have both created a unique brand sound linked to the opening of their products – a powerful psychological trigger relating to anticipation. Tech brands from Apple to Microsoft and Playstation have also created a suite of unique brand sounds connected to the experience of using those products.

In the clip below, two sonic branding experts (yep, that’s a thing); Andrew Stafford – Co-Founder & Director at Big Sync Music and Steve Milton – Founding Partner at Listen, explain the thinking behind some of the world’s most recognizable brand sounds.

“The Intel bong is one of the most powerful assets we have. We’re always looking for ways to showcase the amazing experiences that Intel enables, and the Intel bong sound helps keep our messaging consistent.” – Yogiraj Graham, Director of Production for Intel Global Production Labs.

There are many advantages of having a sonic branding. These include:

More Attention

With the availability of such vast amount of information, attention is your most scarce asset. Adding a complementing sound to reinforce your brand identity can help you get more attention of your target audience.

Triggers Emotion

Sound triggers emotions better than visuals do. Try watching a horror movie without the sound and you won’t feel scared. However, just listening to it without the visuals may scare you.

Enhanced brand recall

According to studies, listening to music/sound which correlates with the message improves the verbal memory of the audience, which leads to a better brand recall.

Clearer Message

Music is directly related to emotions. Different sounds and chords represent different emotions. For example – trumpets and drum rolls denote heroism, tabla denotes something Indian, djembe denotes something African, strings can be used to represent both happiness and sadness.

The use of right sound for your brand can help you communicate your brand message in a better and a creative way.

SOURCES:

What Is Sonic Branding? The Psychology Of Sonic Branding by Aashish Pahwa

Impact of sound on the brain by Amplifon

The Psychology Behind the World’s Most Recognizable Brand Sounds by Dave Ansett