What good is Audio Branding if you can’t break free and have the best creative choices for the project?

At HearDis! and playdis we believe that Audio Branding, when done right, can help brands hit that sweet spot as music and sound make people react faster than visual stimulus, communicate emotions and meaning, as well as shape narratives. Sound also amplifies people’s visual intake and can add congruence and likeability through campaigns, all proven to impact on brand recall and sales.

Audio Branding (or Sonic Branding, Sound Branding) is the strategic use of sound as a part of a brand identity, bringing the brand’s personality to life through sound. It is a scientific and creative exercise, built on extensive research and resulting in sonic guidelines for a brand, enabling it to activate certain perceptions, engagement and behaviors while elevating the sonic experience. Thus, it can be a significant differentiation tool for a company to stand out, varying from brand themes to brand voice, the music used in advertising campaigns to audio logos, ringtones and UX sounds.

In society, advertising plays a huge role in reflecting and shaping us and has changed over the decades, shifting from delivering monologues to dialoguing with customers - a dynamic that increasingly humanized and emotionalized the brands by focusing on creating conversations around shared values and at times also working as an accelerator for societal changes.

“As beneficial as Audio Branding and a great strategic sonic palette can be, for a brand to achieve the desired impact, it needs a degree of flexibility to effectively convey the messages of a campaign. A sonic guideline with fixed harmonies and melodies, for example, can therefore constrain the creative vision and even contradict a brief, simply because it does not reflect significant sociocultural changes, a different range of emotions, trends or topical issues” says Jade Miranda, Music Supervisor at playdis.

Research shows that the greater the fit between the music and the main message of a brand, the greater the recall and impact on the intention to buy. This way, the biggest impact is achieved when the music is both likable and congruent with the message of the brand and campaign.

Rather than a tonal structure, Audio Branding should be about the feel of a brand, but not too limiting. For instance, with an electric car line we do not necessarily need the music to support the fact that the car is electric, such as with an electronic song production and palette. Instead, we want to support the emotions that the film and campaign want to convey while still embracing the brand and product message.

We at HearDis! are confident rule breakers and have created our subsidiary playdis in 2010 to lay the foundation for effective and adaptive Audio Branding while working and collaborating more creatively, including ambitious advertising agencies, to deliver the best results.

“We can provide Audio Branding while producing and implementing high-quality and non-constrained creative work that satisfies any client brief because we go beyond limiting harmonies and melodies, but rather take benefits from defining a broader music spectrum that involves styles, tonalities and other qualities. This way we take the best of both worlds to generate the best possible outcome”, complements Jade.

One of our most successful examples is the Mercedes EQS campaign ‘’The Arrival’’. The music that was created for this film clearly shows what it means to break free from fixed melodies and harmonies as defined in the brand’s sonic guidelines. The song In Our Dream is an exceptional piece of work that was the result of extensive research and a collaboration with the agency antoni.

The music choice was essential to support a bigger palette of emotions and counterbalance the images of the film, generating an iconic original song that expresses a glamorous, fashionable and nostalgic feeling - something that could not have been done with a modern production or following?default sonic ingredients. Furthermore, the original score surprises the audience by deliberately clashing with the sleek and futuristic moving images.

In Our Dream translated the brief and the intended message of the campaign while still being appealing to the consumer and general audience. In addition, the song's success as a standalone piece is also clear.

"Song is spot on. Works with the brand their new vision and of course the product advertised."

"I think I'm obsessed with that song. Can't stop playing it over and over again."

"Golden marketing. As soon as I heard the song I was drawn to it (...) A song about how having a longing dream brings us closer to a love that lasts forever"

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