Top Ten Sonic Brands

Sonic Branding is nothing new – but it is becoming more important.

In a world that is increasingly dominated by sound, with the advent of the smart speaker, the podcast revolution and dwindling attention to traditional visual advertising formats, it is essential that your brand is heard as well as seen.

It is interesting, then, to a have a walk down memory lane, and look at some of what i think of as the best Sonic brands (warning this article may cause a tune to play over and over in your head all afternoon??).

The fact that i'm sure you'll remember them all does a lot of talking for me. I'll break down though why exactly they're so effective:

10. Apple

Technology companies are poised to create the biggest impact possible from clever sonic branding. This is due to the amount of touchpoints in their control – You pay for Apple products, and they serve two functions: the intended function to the consumer, and the ability for the company to promote brand awareness and recognition through use of that device. Every sound your phone makes is a piece of sonic branding: the alarm that wakes you up in the morning; the text sent and received noises; the tapping sound the keyboard makes; and Apple’s coup-de-grace: their instantly recognisable ringtone. All of the noises your iPhone makes are designed to be personable, and friendly, drawing you into a relationship with your device, and hence the brand, which results in customer loyalty.

9. Green Giant

Apple’s appropriation of multiple touchpoints is one way to operate a sonic brand. Another is to have a definite and consistent sonic brand trigger, a short melody that you play at the end of every message you put out publicly. A great example of this is Green Giant’s classic ‘bom bom bom’: they’ve been using this since the 60’s. What makes this sonic so good? I just wrote it out, and I bet that the melody sounded in your head as you read it.

8. Netflix

Netflix is a very interesting sonic case study. Like apple, they are able to control their own touchpoints. As such, everytime you log into your Netflix, you’ll see their logo, and more importantly, you’ll hear their logo. I like to think of this as conditioning in reverse: to train a dog, you ask it to perform an action, and then you reward it with a treat. Positive reinforcement: eventually, the dog will associate good behaviour with a good feeling. The same is happening with Netflix: you hear their logo, and then settle down to relax and enjoy. Netflix have then associated their brand with relaxation and enjoyment. Easy.

7. Hastings

This one pangs of nostalgia. When I arrived in my office, my Managing Director couldn’t believe that I could recite the phone number of an insurance company. This is a lovely excuse to delve into the science behind sonic logos. The human brain can process on average a maximum of 5 tones to memory, making phone numbers a difficult sonic to create. Hastings gets around this by separating their number into 3 distinct parts: phonetically, “Oh-eight-hundred” “Double Oh” “Ten-sixty-six”. This allows your brain to process each part, allowing it to become engrained in memory through frequency.

6. AXA

AXA are notable in their recent change of sonic logo. Often repeated is that sonic logos are a frequency medium: the more they’re heard, the more effective they are. Whilst this is true, the content of the logo is equally important. Frequency will make you remember the brand. But if the message you’re remembering isn’t appropriate for the brand, it could end up having an adverse effect. In 2017 AXA designed a logo intended “to bring the brand closer to the people, adding warmth, modernity and simplicity to the message.”. Immediately you can see the problem – this description doesn’t describe an insurance company. The new logo for 2019 is much more fitting: more serious, more corporate and slightly more complex: the sound of the people you trust when you’re most in need.

5. McDonald's

How could I write about famous sonic brands and not discuss the most famous one of all? I would like to take this opportunity, as an avid hip-hop fan, to state categorically that Justin Timberlake did not make this logo. He was paid $6million to sing the logo – which was written by the rapper Pusha T. With that cleared up, let’s talk about why it’s so good: the tune itself is perfect for the brand message, being happy, light and easily recalled. And with the frequency that McDonald’s have used this melody, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the world that couldn’t sing it when prompted. This however brings a new problem: resentment. If a logo is heard too much, it starts to become an irritant. So how do Mac D’s get around this? They adapt the jingle to the tone of the advert. Ad with hell’s angel bikers? Heavy metal I’m Lovin’ it. Ad with anime style pop-art? K-pop I’m Lovin’ it. You get the idea. It’s this adaptability that makes this logo so unique.

4. Intel

Intel is another one that can’t be left out of a list like this. Their four tones may be considered the most famous jingle in the world, and has been extraordinarily effective over the years. The fact is, what intel do is very complicated. I don’t know much about the inner workings of computers, and I think in this respect I can be considered representative of the wider public. This jingle simplifies the choice, by simplifying the brand: I still don’t know much about computers, but I know I want mine to have the latest intel core processor. Or whatever it’s called.

3. Playstation 2

This one has personal value maybe. In a very similar sense to the Netflix logo discussed before, the Playstation 2 startup sound rang in my ears every time I loaded up the newest copy of fifa to take the last of my brother’s dwindling self-esteem. The sound, too, is very appropriate. It sounds like something starting up, clinking into gear; a wistful sound drifting toward the sharp “I’m ready” tone at the end. It successfully builds excitement for the game to start. Naturally, I associated this startup sound with happiness. And generally, victory. And to this day I have fond feelings toward Playstation as a brand.

2. Nokia

The Nokia ringtone is iconic. In 2009, this tone was heard 1.8 billion times per day. That’s 20,000 times per second. That’s mental. The tune itself is stripped down from a classic Spanish guitar piece by Francisco Tárrega, a genre of music that is famously social in its heavy dependence on call and response, and calming yet pragmatic tone: perfect for a company dependent on communication.

1. Audi

Audi are my favourite sonically branded company. This is due to a number of reasons, which I will go into, but primarily it is because of the amount of time, effort and thought they have placed into developing a complete soundscape to capture Audi’s brand. Don’t just take my word for it: you can find their detailed explanation on their website here:

Their trigger is recognisable as coming after their tagline “Vorsprung durch Technik”, roughly translated to “advancement through technology”. It is four drum beats underpinned by a metallic hiss, metrically syncopated to resemble a mechanical heartbeat. This promotes the perfect message for Audi: we’re engineering cars as well as humans have been engineered. This trigger is played on the end of every advert. It is now played, too, as the more modern cars startup, using their trigger in a similar way to Netflix’s startup sound.

This isn’t the end of their sonic branding effort, however.

Every noise the car makes is engineered to be distinctly Audi. The engine startup, the car door, the exhaust backfire – all of these have been thought about, and designed to give the impression of excellent engineering.

This effort too is continued onto the soundtrack to every advert they produce. You’ll know it if you’re hearing Audi. These are taken from a library of Audi scores; each generated using pre-approved instruments and sounds, and each designed to be slightly different, to promote different makes and models, or perhaps to place a similar model in a different context, to appeal to a different audience. They are all common thematically: a mixture of existential and intricate classical music and more modern, electronic sounds. This creates a personable feeling, with a joy in driving, whilst securing the quality of their engineering in the consumer’s mind.

The degree to which Audi have thought through sound is remarkable, and is the benchmark in an ever more important industry.

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