Audio Branding: Do You Want to Make (Sound) Waves with Your Brand?

You have heard me talk about the importance of crafting a meaningful logo, as well as building a cohesive and complete visual brand system. These are the cornerstone elements to ensure that your brand image is consistent and it accurately represents your business.

But have you considered how audio branding might improve the effectiveness of your brand?

Yes, it’s true that to build a memorable and strong brand that customers will flock to, your brand visuals need to be professional and engaging. And most importantly they have to be appealing to your specific target audience.

However, the visual aspect of a brand is one of many other touchpoints in which your customers can experience your brand.

Customers Have Many Touchpoints with Your Brand

When it comes to customer experience, there are many other, equally important brand aspects such as:

• Brand personality (also known as an archetype)
• Tone of voice
• Core messaging framework
• Tagline/s and service descriptors
• And many other non-visual brand elements
• Audio Branding is Becoming More Prevalent

More and more businesses are seeing the value in creating strong, engaging visuals for their brand. And this is equally exciting, as it is an overwhelming time.

With more businesses worthy of our attention with great looking brands, it’s only natural that we will start to develop ‘noise-immunity’, just like we have learnt to tune out advertising on Facebook and co.

Needless to say, brands will need to find additional ways to differentiate and grab our attention. The answer could lie in audio branding, aka sound logos aka sound trademarking.

What is it? Look at it as an additional layer to your many existing brand layers. A supplementary sensory experience that can help you hook your customers. Like the close cousin, scent marketing, audio branding can be an additional advantage to become more sticky in your customers’ minds.

Audio Branding is Popular Again

Back in the noughties, jingles were all the rage. They are still loosely used by some brands but have been falling out of favour with the public for the last 20 years, because of sheer saturation.

However, with the rise of virtual home assistants and smart homes, the audio branding component has quickly become super relevant again.

According to an auditory study, over 80 percent of people can successfully identify a correct pitch for a brand sound or audio logo. This is for the nonmusician test group. As you can imagine, musically inclined participants scored much higher.

This statistic means that adopting a meaningful, relevant and memorable sound logo for your business could prove to be beneficial and might be worth considering.

Increase Brand Recognition and Customer Trust

Sound logos are about to become especially important for lifestyle and e-commerce brands.

A lot of our purchases will be completed via our virtual assistants. And hearing a reassuring ‘ding’ after purchase would be the expected customer experience. Mastercard has already jumped on this (sound) wave by tailoring a custom Sonic Brand, along with a library of sounds that include everything from contactless payment transaction sounds to on-hold music and others.

If your brand shares any video content, podcasts or educational courses, audio branding could hold the same importance. Hearing a familiar jingle or sound logo during your content will deepen your brand recognition with that customer.

One thing is clear – voice-first technologies bring with them a new requirement for an audio brand strategy. A Branding Agency with the know-how can consider this requirement as part of your overall Brand Strategy, helping you to identify whether audio branding is a relevant touchpoint for your business.

Recommendations for Business Owners

As a business owner, it’s important to consider whether audio branding can add any benefit to your customers or your brand.

It will depend on the industry you operate in, your target market and demographic, as well as the overall Customer Journey (more on how to create your Customer Journey Map in a later post).

The key is to recognise that times are changing, and your brand needs to be flexible so that it can grow and evolve with the times. Sometimes, the early adopters who jump on a new development quickly, before it becomes a trend, do tend to have an advantage over those who don’t.

After you’ve carefully considered the application of sound branding in your business, reach out to your preferred branding agency to see if they can help you strategise and execute something truly memorable that can serve you for decades to come.

Now Over To You

I want to hear about your experiences with sound branding, jingles and sound trademarking  – reach out via email or on Instagram and let’s get a discussion going!

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