Sonic branding and the aesthetic infrastructure of everyday consumption

Sonic branding – the sonic expression of a brand's identity – is the audio equivalent of a brand's logo, a sound that is both distinct and adaptable to diverse contexts, and serves to communicate a brand's narrative. Sonic branding has been a feature of marketing strategies for the past two decades, but more recently there has been increased commercial interest in sonic branding, a move from the ‘visual turn’ to the ‘sonic turn’, as voice activation technologies such as Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant immerse the consumer in a personal encounter across diverse sensory touch points. While there has been significant scholarly discussion in popular music studies of the ways that sound is employed to increase capital in commercial contexts, little has been written to address the ways in which popular music is courted and implicated in brand strategy specific to sonic branding. In this paper, we consider the ways in which sounds are embedded in contemporary brand practice and detail the ways in which popular musicians and genres are complicit partners in ‘branding to the senses’. Here, we focus on two sonic branding case studies – Mastercard and HSBC – which highlight the key role of popular music in constructing the way we ‘hear’ brands.

Sonic branding: a conceptualization of the mass media audience

This Major Research Paper (MRP) explores sonic logos, which are short sound bites used in commercial advertising to represent brands to the public. I discuss how these types of sounds are increasingly being used to attract audience attention in the current corporate and mass media landscape. My research is informed by scholarly debates about the role of the audience in contemporary media environments and traces key positions in this debate, including Celia Lury’s (1993) suggestion that contemporary audiences are passive and Philip Napoli’s (2010) suggestion that social media audiences now play a more active role in producing and sharing media content. Henry Jenkins (2004) provides a synthesis of these two views and states that while the audience has the option to be participatory on social media platforms, there is still an increasing trend toward concentrated ownership in the entertainment industry. I conducted interviews with advertising and branding professionals and analyzed the manner in which producers’ conceptualizations of the audience shape sonic branding practices. One key finding of my study is that media producers believe that changes in technology have changed the way that brand and media institutions interact with their audience. Another key finding is that producers view the contemporary media audience as distracted but also ore sophisticated due to their access and use of communication technologies.

Sonic branding: a conceptualization of the mass media audience

This Major Research Paper (MRP) explores sonic logos, which are short sound bites used in commercial advertising to represent brands to the public. I discuss how these types of sounds are increasingly being used to attract audience attention in the current corporate and mass media landscape. My research is informed by scholarly debates about the role of the audience in contemporary media environments and traces key positions in this debate, including Celia Lury’s (1993) suggestion that contemporary audiences are passive and Philip Napoli’s (2010) suggestion that social media audiences now play a more active role in producing and sharing media content. Henry Jenkins (2004) provides a synthesis of these two views and states that while the audience has the option to be participatory on social media platforms, there is still an increasing trend toward concentrated ownership in the entertainment industry. I conducted interviews with advertising and branding professionals and analyzed the manner in which producers’ conceptualizations of the audience shape sonic branding practices. One key finding of my study is that media producers believe that changes in technology have changed the way that brand and media institutions interact with their audience. Another key finding is that producers view the contemporary media audience as distracted but also ore sophisticated due to their access and use of communication technologies.

Brand tune up: building value for brands through strategic sonic planning

While often overlooked, sound and music play an important role in marketing communications strategies. To stand out in today’s competitive marketplace, top companies are investing in strategic sonic planning to build value for their brands. This paper will investigate the role of sonic branding in marketing communications, and how brands can authentically and cost effectively integrate music and sound into their overall communications strategy. Looking at the history and future of sonic branding and the impact of sound and music on brands and consumers, this paper will seek to define a practical guideline for marketers and practitioners of sonic branding. The paper concludes that although it is difficult to quantify the impact of a sonic strategy, brands that embrace the principles of sonic branding can more effectively reach customers across all touch points. Moreover, the paper asserts that best practices for creating customized audio solutions differ from culture to culture.

Brand tune up: building value for brands through strategic sonic planning

While often overlooked, sound and music play an important role in marketing communications strategies. To stand out in today’s competitive marketplace, top companies are investing in strategic sonic planning to build value for their brands. This paper will investigate the role of sonic branding in marketing communications, and how brands can authentically and cost effectively integrate music and sound into their overall communications strategy. Looking at the history and future of sonic branding and the impact of sound and music on brands and consumers, this paper will seek to define a practical guideline for marketers and practitioners of sonic branding. The paper concludes that although it is difficult to quantify the impact of a sonic strategy, brands that embrace the principles of sonic branding can more effectively reach customers across all touch points. Moreover, the paper asserts that best practices for creating customized audio solutions differ from culture to culture.

Hearing, Remembering, and Branding

Sound plays an important role in creating brands. It can identify a brand, distinguish it from competing brands, support a brand image, and convey brand attributes nonverbally. However, unlike other nonverbal elements of branding (e.g., visual logos), despite its frequent use in practice, sound is relatively underrepresented in the research literature on the topic of branding. This chapter seeks to address this gap by explicating the concept of “sonic branding,” proposing a conceptual framework, and suggesting an agenda for future research on sonic branding with emphasis on sonic logos (which the chapter will refer to as “sogos”).

Sonic Branding

Clara Gustafsson takes issue with the belief, prevalent among brand managers and brand researchers alike, that sonic branding is first and foremost about the music. Instead, Gustafsson suggests that sonic branding should prioritize cocreation with the consumer. The consumer thus becomes a valued cocreator of meaning and brand identity, the consumer’s imagination playing a role in developing a meaningful platform for the brand. Gustafsson explores this viewpoint by arguing for the use of immersive research methods, cultural branding, and ethnographic techniques in shifting the focus away from the music and onto the consumer in order to develop a new approach to sonic branding research.

Audiobranding and Its Importance to Your Personal Brand

In this chapter we will try to discover the importance of audio and voice as key elements in building a personal brand. Podcast, audioblogs and web tools that reference the sound will be analyzed based on their degree of influence on personal branding. By using the voice we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors, so the audio branding, or sonic branding as it is also known, shows a verbal identity of his own personality. The sound has always been known for being a great tool to convey memorable messages to consumers, in fact we are able to consume the sound since we are in the womb. Having an audio brand is one way to ensure that no other company uses a similar audio and make our brand is consistent. The radio language, consisting of voice, music, silence and the special effects are responsible for generating emotions in the receiving public. The audio conveys information, entertains consumers and in the long term, helps build a positive image that reinforces the brand values. The design of an audio brand goes beyond creating a catchy jingle or a piece of melody.

Musical “Covers” and the Culture Industry

This essay foregrounds “covers” of popular recorded songs as well as male and female desire, in addition to Nietzsche’s interest in composition, together with his rhythmic analysis of Ancient Greek as the basis of what he called the “spirit of music” with respect to tragedy. The language of “sonic branding” allows a discussion of what Günther Anders described as the self-creation of mass consumer but also the ghostly time-space of music in the broadcast world. A brief allusion to Rilke complements a similarly brief reference to Jankelevitch’s “ineffable.”