WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT SONIC BRANDING FROM SINGING IN A BARBERSHOP CHORUS CHRISTMAS SHOW

SLHC Quartet performing at The Sheldon, Saint Louis, MO

Since about mid-October I’ve been singing Tenor in an all-women’s barbershop quartet here in Saint Louis – Saint Louis Harmony Chorus.  As a chapter of Sweet Adelines International we do many fun events and one of those is an annual Christmas concert.  Singing at this Christmas concert brought one question to mind.

Do we as a society sonic brand Christmas?

I think yes.  And we do it really well too!  Think of Christmas as one of the oldest companies in the world.  Christmas has merged cultures and period specific traditions, as it grows older and becomes a more global holiday.   And it is still going strong!

My point here is that a company could look at Christmas and see how we modernize and revamp Christmas carols each year for the pop industry – and it helps sell the same music we’ve been listening to our entire lives, but in a new package.  We also have those period specific tunes that bring us memories and nostalgia from older days – “I’ll be Home For Christmas” (World War II), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Meet Me in Saint Louis, 1944), White Christmas (1954) and how can we forget the words of the angels in Bethlehem written into Handel’s Messiah, Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Bringing it all together

My point is that well-established companies can use Christmas as a model to develop long-term sonic branding efforts, in doing a few things:

• Constantly revamp original music/sounds/melodies
• Incorporate new sounds to remind us of new events, campaigns or products
• Spread the same message through all sonic branding efforts

SONIC BRANDS: CUSTOMIZING YOUR SOUND

Sonic branding, by nature, should be simple. Catchy. Uncomplicated.  The more consistency exists among melody, tone and rhythm…the better.

Over the past 5-10 years several companies tried to do too much with their sonic branding.  I’m going to pick on Motorola.

The Many Sounds of Motorola

The original motorola sound was great – really recognizable. I remember hearing it and thinking “that’s what I want my cell phone to sound like”.  Keeping some consistency they started to incorporate a similar but slightly different techno-geek vibe into humor driven advertisements, like this one. Recently, they developed the friend-o-meter micro site to measure how well we really know our friends on social networks.

In fairness to Motorola, these three examples do maintain a consistent feel, a similar personality, but they make us work too hard to recognize the brand behind the sound.  Customers want to hear something a little different every time, not a totally different melody.

The Simple Melody

I’ve always been an advocate for recognizable melodies like the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” tune or even the ever-evolving Nintendo melody that has somehow stayed intact for over 20 years.  I recommend companies take a rigid root melody and build additional sound elements (i.e. new tempos, tones or voices)  over that ever present melody.

Here are some suggestions.

1. Try Mixing Up Genres – rock, classical, indie…just keep the integrity of the brand and the target audience in check

2. Try Mixing Up Cultural Contexts – companies with a global presence need to pay special attention to the nuances among different cultural sounds

3. Try Mixing Up Media – try creating slightly different sounds for mobile phones, television, radio, and ambient media

4. Try Mixing Up The Mix – try new arrangements while continuing to incorporate the original melodies

5. Try Mixing With A Band – if you don’t want to stick with one particular melody, find a band with consistent sounding songs and collections to “audiate” (I made that word up) your brand

If your head is spinning faster than a turntable at a New York rave, then take 5-minutes and watch this overview video from Massive Media.  It gives a great general summary of these points.

COLLECTIVE SONIC IDENTITY: Crowd Sourcing Sound

Sonic branding is nothing new, but truly creative people find new ways to change and evolve sound, aligning it with other hot branding trends. I have to wonder, with all this talk about crowd sourcing, can we get some sonic identity advice from our target audiences?

Rumblefish and Indie Vinyl

One particular example comes from a sonic branding and music licensing agency called Rumblefish.  Pabst Blue Ribbon approached Rumblefish to help them boost sales in a couple of their cult Indie music-loving but lagging markets.  This was their solution:

Rumblefish listened to and interviewed 200 bands from each target city and picked the 15 best songs. We then produced PBR-branded CDs and 7″ vinyl records and gave every copy to the bands–no strings attached–to distribute to their fans. Bands were so enthusiastic about the project, many threw CD release parties on their own initiative.

I think Rumblefish definitely got it right with the Indie music and the vinyl 45.  But what if they had asked their target audience to vote for their 15 favorite songs instead of conducting interviews?  Trusting your brands sonic identity to the audience, now that’s crowd sourcing.

Make sure to check out the new video I posted to Vod Pod.  The new Discovery Channel “I LOVE THE WORLD” commercial is a great addition to the “I LOVE THE WORLD” family.  Might even beat the original.

Melody Repetition: My Sonic Branding Breakthrough!

This post covers all of the interesting sonic branding information I uncovered while writing my thesis.  Ok, maybe not ALL of the interesting information, but the really important stuff is all here.

The general rule of thumb is to remember this one daunting little fact about sonic branding.  Sonic branding is VERY conditional and requires meticulous consideration of several factors. But is it worth it?  I think yes.

What I studied

My research focused on melody repetition.  I’ll explain.

Sometimes when you hear something on TV, on the radio, or online it just sticks.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes it grows on you and sometimes the more you hear it the more it makes you want to pull your hair out and jam your small toe in an electrical socket.

But let me ask this.  How frequently do you watch or hear commercials with some type of music: a rhythmic beat, a little advertising ditty or some over processed pop song playing in the background.  For me, it’s quite often, which is why I asked the following two questions.

How does repeated exposure to this mélange of advertising music impact our feelings toward brands and advertising?

And do we really remember any of the valuable advertising information if there is music playing with an advertisement?

After conducting my research, I developed some useful sonic branding questions that companies can ask to avoid a bad sonic branding experience.

Sonic branding questions

1. Is sonic branding a good tactic for the brand right now? Maybe consumers are a bit confused about your brand’s personality; fix that before implementing a sonic branding effort.
2. If I could hear this brand, what would it sound like?
3. Have we chosen the best media to launch our sonic branding efforts? (i.e. internet is not always a good place to use sonic branding, think outside the box). Think about where people want to hear sound.
4. Have we thoroughly tested these sonic branding concept melodies or sounds by employing unbiased focus groups?
5. Did we distinguish consumers’ attitudes toward the brand from their attitudes toward the advertisement or campaign? You need to do this because a brand personality may not always be evident in an advertising campaign.  It should be evident in a campaign, but that doesn’t always happen.  Make sure you’re communicating the real brand personality.
6. Is this a novel brand or an established brand? Sonic branding may provide different results for novel brands than for established brands. Consider the difference between using sonic branding to promote a new brand versus using sonic branding to promote a well-seasoned brand.
7. Do all sounds and/or music come together to convey a consistent personality? I don’t think I need to explain consistency, just do it.

This list above is by no means exhaustive.  Companies continue to research and develop their understanding about sonic branding so this list is sure to grow.

Any other helpful sonic branding tips??

Six Reasons to Write About Sonic Branding?

This post answers one question – why write about sonic branding? Well, sonic branding is going to become more and more prevalent in future advertising and promotion efforts.  Check out these supporting points:

• Advertisement clutter: sound effectively cuts through advertising clutter to reinforce a brand personality.  Psychologists say that when we hear a sound it has an orienting response: it captures our attention and we pay attention.

• Nanotechnology: nanotechnology advances offer creative opportunities to use sound in mobile and outdoor promotions.  With flexible screens and shrinking computers, we will probably have headphones on all the time.  I’m not saying that it’s good, but never say never.  Pretty soon we’ll have greeting cards that play music…wait a minute…

• Internet TV: iTV providers like hulu.com and blinx.com offers a traditional media interface with very effective advertising for captive audiences, this could result in a return to jingle’s and more innovative forms of sonic branding.

• Spending: businesses continue to allocate more dollars to sonic branding while cutting back in other areas, which also helps to develop more sonic branding opportunities.

• Brand perceptions: Noel Franus, owner of SonicID believes that sound is a powerful influencer when it comes to consumer brand perceptions.

• Effectiveness: in a study released by Business Line, sound was found 9x as effective as visual branding and 7x as effective as touch branding.  We may have created a monster, but we also may have brought sound back to life!

The main idea is that sonic branding has a lot to offer those who listen, that’s why I’m dedicating an entire blog to it.

In your opinion, what is the biggest advantage that sonic branding holds?

What is Sonic Branding?

This is it.  Sonic Branding 101.  Let’s start by taking a little quiz; if you pass you don’t even need to read the rest of this post.  If you don’t pass, you’ll catch up fast I promise.  Ok, here it goes.

Sonic Branding Placement Quiz

• The term “sonic” in sonic branding refers to my favorite drive-in chain with those amazing deep fried onion rings and that delectable beverage better known as Diet Cherry Limeade.
• The term “sonic” in sonic branding refers to the little blue hedgehog from Sega videogames.
• The term “sonic” in sonic branding is related to the latin root word for sound, “sonus”, in reference to sound waves.  (cough, cough).  Sound is often used to communicate a brand personality or theme.  (my that was a suspiciously long answer compared to the other choices…)

And the answer is…uh, the last one.  Sonic refers to sound.  Sound branding.  I think you already knew that, but didn’t this quiz make you feel like a linguistic dynamo? Now read the rest of the post.  It’s not like I’m making you pay for credit here.

Sonic Branding Basics

Sonic branding popularity really does come in waves. In the 1950’s, 1960’s and even 1970’s we saw a lot of jingles in TV and radio commercials.  In the 1980’s, 1990’s we watched pop artists like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and even Chris Brown rocking out to support their favorite brands.  Today, we have sonic logos for Intel, T-Mobile and several other companies.  Sonic logos pair a short animated visual with a short melody…we’re talking in the 3-5 second range.

As you can see, sonic branding comes in many different packages: to make it easy, let’s learn about the basic categories of sound first.

Categories of Sound

According to Dan Jackson’s book Sonic Branding, three types of sound create the building blocks for sonic branding: ambient, vocal and musical melodic sound.

Ambient: Ambient is a sound that you may hear in your natural environment, but is not necessarily a naturally occurring sound.  Car whizzing by on the freeway and a babbling brook both represent ambient sound.  Ask two questions when trying to identify an ambient sound:

1. Is this a spoken sound?
2. Does this sound have a musical melody and rhythm?

If you answer “yes” to either of the above questions, the sound is probably not ambient, but rather falls under one of the other categories of sound.

Vocal: This is a voice, a spoken sound or words.  Pretty simple.

Musical melodic: Music comes in many different shapes and sizes.  However, if the sound is not an ambient sound and possesses a rhythm and melody then it is a musical sound.

A lot of traditional sonic branding used musical melodies to brand products: Oscar-Meyer, Chevrolet, and Coca-Cola.  These melodies stick with us, become part of our culture.  Take a look at Coca-Cola, they have kept that same happy feeling in their Open Happiness campaign while keeping their music fresh and current. This isn’t a jingle though, it is a licensed song written by Calvin Harris.  Under musical melodies you have a few categories:

• Tracking music/Background music
• Licensed music from artists
• Licensed music written for the advertisements
• And…jingles

We’ll really dive into the categories of musical melodies in a later post.

Can you think of your favorite song or melody from a commercial?  Why did you like it?  What made it stand out as unique or different?

SONIC INTERNET: Micro Podcasting (μCasts)

To anyone interested in sonic branding, there’s a new sheriff in town – micro podcasting (also denoted as μCasting). And it has two deputies: AudioBoo and WorldVoice Radio.

Micro blogging typically involves recording short (less that 3 minute) podcasts via computer or phone to broadcast.  Then just like Twitter, followers may listen to or comment on the μCasts.

What does this mean for sonic branding efforts?

1. Twitter is big. This is Twitter with sound. So don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that digital media is evolving back toward the written word.  However, it could really take off.  If advertisers keep their eyes on this mCasting trend, they could end up on the front lines.
2. Sound is multi-dimensional. Sound helps to communicate more information in the same amount of time as the written word.  Sound helps communicate emotions like sincerity, anger or fear.  Companies can take advantage of sound to communicate their brand personality. 
3. μCasting provides a viable way to spread sonic branding. Companies that use mCasting can provide interesting content for consumers while also helping to solidify their sonic personality.

With so many opportunities to integrate this new technology with Twitter and other social media μCasting is a unique new trend to keep your eyes and ears on. Who knows?  Your agency may be the agency that really brings it to life.

Welcome to Sonic PhD: Sound Branding School

Sonic PhD: Sound Branding School is a blog for businesses, marketers and advertising agencies that want to learn about the burgeoning art of branding with sound or sonic branding.  Learn about creating, using and analyzing sonic personalities.  Enjoy!