Do you remember the sound you hear after switching on the mobile? Every brand has a different sound that comes after the mobile is switched on. Why? Does that matter?
It’s in every field, even on social media like Facebook, when we push the like button, we hear a sound. Why do we need that sound?
If you hear any particular sound associated with a brand, then you can be definitely sure that the brand is using sonic branding in marketing.
In this blog, we’ll be looking at what sonic branding is, sonic signatures, and sonic logo, along with benefits, tips, examples, and psychology behind using sonic branding in marketing.
So, let’s get started!
What is Sonic Branding, Sonic Logo, & Signature?
Let’s first get together with sonic branding, then we’ll move ahead to sonic signatures and logo.
Sonic branding is the association and strategic use of specific pieces of sounds or jingles with a brand to identify and advertise products and services.
Incorporating sound into the brand makes it more recognizable along with an improved user experience.
Why marketers are using sound? Have you ever thought about it?
Well, sound is the most powerful memory of the human brain, it’s easy to recognize the sound and everyone can connect with it. Human beings only take 0.146 seconds in reacting to it.
I hope you’ve got your answer to why marketers are using it. If a piece of sound can make a powerful brand, then why shouldn’t we cash it!
It’s becoming a powerful and popular medium for conveying a memorable, personalized, and targeted message to its target audience, and the use of sonic logos and sonic signatures are making it livelier.
Sonic logos are the audio cue used by a brand. These are made to leave an impression of the brand in the consumer’s mind. Sonic logos are instantly recognizable and memorable for a longer period of time.
While on the other hand, a sonic signature is a particular type of sonic branding in which a few notes are repeated in the same way. Mostly signatures are used for confirmation of an action.
As we know now that sonic branding is the sound of your brand. Now, the question is, who creates it?
Well, if it’s a part of the strategy then, it’s obvious that it’s developed by the brands. Developing a sonic branding strategy, sonic logo, and sonic signature is part of an intentional strategy. It helps audiences in associating some specific sounds with a particular brand.
I hope, now you have a clear understanding of sonic branding, logos, and signatures. Now, let’s move forward, and get to know the psychology behind using sound in marketing!
The psychology behind using Sound in Marketing
Do you know about the concept of visual branding? Most people know about visual branding, but sound branding isn’t as well-known as visual branding. But for small companies and businesses, it’s as important as visuals, and sometimes even more.
The psychology behind using sound in marketing is, that human beings make their best and ultimate decisions in a non-rational way. These decisions are made by the limbic part of the human mind. And do you know, that the limbic part of the human mind is aroused by sound or music?
You can comprehend now, how sound can impart a big role in the sales process and in the growth of the brand.
What types of Businesses should start with Sonic Branding?
Not every type of business can incorporate Sonic Branding. As, it’s about incorporating sound in the marketing materials, and each brand doesn’t use audio and video materials, but if used then this is highly impactful for them. Brands and individuals that can incorporate it are;
- An author producing audiobooks
- A tutor producing video tutorials
- An individual hosting a vlog or podcast
- Hold Music for the customer service department
- Brands use audio and video in marketing materials whether to advertise or describe products and services.
Now, let’s move ahead and get to know about the benefits of sonic branding.
Benefits of Sonic Branding
There are a lot of benefits it can provide to a business. In sonic branding, we use simple mnemonics, specific pieces of sounds, jingles, specific audios, sound effects etc. But these simple things carry a lot of emotional and exclusive value that helps consumers to connect with the brand on both emotional and personal levels
The benefits we can get through it are:
- Emotionally Connect with the brand by Triggering Emotions
- Getting more attention and recognition
- Stronger Brand Loyalty
- Boosting Brand Personality
- Enhanced Brand Experience, Engagement and Recall
- Communicating Clear and Single Messaging at a time
- Conveys Purpose and Values easily
We’ve seen that sonic branding provides so many benefits to the brands. Sonic branding connects customers on an emotional level with the help of sounds. Being resonating on an emotional level, it’s very easy and efficient to convey purpose and value with sonic branding. In the same way, sounds humanise the digital web presence of a brand and make it more appealing to the customers.
As we’ve discussed earlier the sonic logo, don’t you want to know the tips for creating a sonic logo of your own?
Tips to Create Sonic Logo for a Brand
Well, the sonic logo is the heart of branding campaigns, moving forward without discussing about it wouldn’t be justice to the blog. So, the tips you need to remember while creating a sonic logo are;
Find out your competitors & Target Audience
It’s better to identify your competitors as well as your audience. You need to find out who your competitors are, and to who are you selling your products and services. For the target audience, you can create a user persona, and for brand competitors, you can make a list.
Conduct a Sonic Branding Audit of your own and competitors’ Brands
After determining the audience and target audience, you need to conduct a branding audit to look for inspiration. After that, you should also conduct a branding audit of your own find, to find out where you’re lacking, what type of end screens and words you are using at the end of your educational or training video materials, are using any background music in the videos?
After auditing your own brands and competitors you’ll a crystal clear understanding of where you are standing right now.
Keep Sonic Logo Simple and Easily Recognizable
When you’ll see the existing brands that are using it in their brands, you’ll find out that they’ve not included the whole jingle, long music, or songs. But, instead, they’ve used some musical mnemonics to generate a specific emotion in the target audience. So, keep your sonic logo as simple as possible, and don’t rely on words.
A couple of seconds would be more than enough to generate emotion in the consumer’s mind and get the right response. If your logo is simple, only then it would be easily recognizable, and memorable, so don’t overwhelm it with emotions by making it complicated. A simple sonic logo is enough to fulfil what we’re expecting.
Trigger Emotions with Your Sonic Logo
It triggers emotions that help consumers in communicating with the brand and feeling relaxed. Your logo should trigger positive emotions.
Triggering positive emotions, like feeling relaxed, peaceful, secure etc. would make your sound meaningful. Because the sonic logo is about focusing on particular emotions, it isn’t a random sound.
Don’t include so much, your logo and tagline with the piece of simple positive music would be enough for your sonic logo.
Make a Unique Sonic Logo
If you’re leaving a chance of comparing then you’re losing a lot of your customers. The easiest way from standing out from the competition is to be unique. So, you need to generate your own customised Sonic Logo.
Keep Improving
As in marketing, we can’t say what audiences will like and what not. So, if your Sonic Logo isn’t performing well, then you can always conduct an audit as to why your consumers are not appreciating your logo. You can always improve as it takes time. It isn’t easy to create an iconic logo, but you’ll eventually get there if you don’t lose sight of your vision.
Follow these 6 tips for creating a Sonic Logo of your brand, I’m sure now you are ready to create a Logo of your own. Let’s see the examples of sonic branding to get more clarity about it.
Examples of Sonic Branding
There’re a lot of examples of it we can see in our daily life. As many big giants are using it for decades and everyone can identify them with their sound only. Some of the most famous examples of Sonic Branding are;
- Netflix’s “Ta-dum”
- NBC’s “Three-tone Chime”
- Coca-Cola’s “Taste the Feeling”
- HBO’s “Ahh”
- Intel Inside
- Nokia’s Default Tune
- T-series’ “Drum-beat with Music”
We’ve seen big brands in the electronics, music, food and Television industries using it in marketing for quite a long time. It’s time for you to decide the sonic branding strategy of your brand. You can see in the examples how brands are incorporating it from just simple sound to music. Some are also including a tagline that is generating a particular emotion.
Now, let’s wrap up the blog!
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, sonic branding is about using sound in marketing. We create a sonic logo and signature. But these are just the beginning of sonic branding. For proper branding and to be heard, known and recognized worldwide, you need to manage the sound experience for every consumer and touchpoints in every market. As we know sound or music connects and inspires us by triggering emotions, so this branding technique provides an opportunity to tap into public emotions.
As we know music and sounds bring us together by relaxing, motivating or generating other emotions, no matter where we stand in our culture, people, or demographics. I hope now you have understood that “Sonic Branding isn’t just a jingle; it’s more than that. “
Want to start with Sonic Branding with your brand? Ask a simple question to yourself, “What and how does your brand sound like?”
I hope we’ve covered everything regarding Sonic Branding, if you’ve more questions, you can drop us a comment!
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