All You Need To Know About Sonic Branding

In the world of sonic branding, every beat tells a story

That’s why finding your brand’s sound can be challenging, but once you’ve found it, it can take your brand to the next level.

Roscoe Williamson, Global Creative Strategy & Innovation Director at MassiveMusic & Songtradr, spoke to Streamly in a three-part interview series about the insights, challenges and the future of audio branding.

Feeling lost, not knowing where to start? That’s why we’re here – with a recap of all sonic insights in one blog article. Ready to turn up the volume on your brand?

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Video 1: Four steps to finding your brand’s sound

Finding a unique sound for your brand is crucial for several reasons. First, it can help your brand stand out. Especially in markets with loads of competition, having a sonic brand identity in place can make sure you’re getting recognised faster than Beyoncé doing her grocery shopping. Secondly, your brand’s sound can have an emotional impact on your audience and is key to creating a deeper connection with them. In a world where everything is fast-paced, connection is vital.

In this first interview, Roscoe shared four insightful steps that show the process of finding that distinctive sound that sets your brand apart. Watch the video or skip directly to the key takeaways (but while you’re here anyway, why not just watch it?) further below.

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Key Takeaways - Finding your brand’s sound follows these four steps:
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01

Research strategy

Knowledge is power. Before getting started, we need to understand your brand’s audience, your competitors, historical context and trends. Once we know this, we can design a sonic architecture – considering all the different touchpoints you’re catering to as a brand.

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02

Moodboarding and Production

Here, we focus on reviewing sound palettes to eliminate sounds that don’t suit your brand while discovering ones that do. Once we have this, we head to the kitchen to cook up a master sonic identity.

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03

Governance and Deployment

During this step, we look at how to use sound strategically across different parts of the business. Do we need to create different types of music to fit various contexts? All while keeping the brand consistent – because, remember, consistency is key.

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Review and Iteration

During this final phase, we review the performance of the brand sound in the market, while ensuring the audio brand is kept up to date.

Video 2: From jingles to AI

When we talk about audio branding, most people think of jingles. However, things have changed a lot since the first jingle made an appearance nearly a century ago (and yep, a century ago we didn’t have colour television yet) to the rise of AI recently. Not to forget, we’re also in the middle of the TikTok era. The sound-on platform is reshaping sonic branding and making sound a social currency.

How is this affecting the sonic strategy for our brand? All that and more in the second video, where Roscoe chats about the past and future of sonic branding.

Fun fact: Speaking about TikTok, did you know Roscoe actually played a part in creating TikTok's memorable sound logo?

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Key Takeaways
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Sonic branding has become increasingly more important for brands over the years. The current media landscape is so saturated that any form of consistency and cut through with an audio identity can help your brand stand out.

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The recent rise of sound-on social media platforms and voice-first tools, such as TikTok and Alexa, have put sound and music very much at the forefront of the experience, therefore making it even more important for your brand to be present in the sonicsphere.

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AI technologies allow for a different kind of sound composition – the key will be to keep the link between creator and music.

Video 3: What is Sonic Branding?

Many brands are still in the snooze mode when it comes to what they sound like. They mainly focus on how they visually market themselves, but when it comes to Roscoe (and all of us at MassiveMusic), marketers need to educate themselves on all things sonic branding. Why? Because music and sound assets are still heavily underused.

Sonic branding isn't all rainbows and unicorns. There are some challenges you might encounter, but the result is truly worth it. Find out exactly what sonic branding is, why it’s important in today's media landscape and the common pitfalls to look out for in this third and last video.

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Key Takeaways
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Sonic branding in a nutshell: A holistic approach to how a brand uses music, sound and voice across all their touchpoints.

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02

Many brands still underestimate the impact of music and sound. However, incorporating these consistently across all touchpoints helps brands cut through the noisy environment, increasing awareness and effectiveness.

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Challenges include educating brands on the necessity of audio and ensuring consistent usage across all platforms.

Let’s wrap this up

Next thing you know, you’ve learned all about the importance of sonic branding and how to find your brand’s sound. Don’t forget to hit the play button (and not the snooze button) on these key sonic strategies for your brand and you’ll surely reach spatial heights. See you next time 🤘🏼

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