Small businesses take note
Two words. Sonic branding.
If you’re thinking “what’s sonic branding?”, you’re not alone. If you have a business and you’re thinking “who cares” the answer is — you should.
Sonic branding is the integration of custom branded sound into a brands’ marketing strategy.
Sonic branding is the difference between “meh” and “wow” advertising.
Silicon Valley is known for their ground breaking technical discoveries and enhancements. Some like Apple, Intel, and Netflix have even defined themselves through their one of a kind sounds.
But other than a very select few, not all of them have fully embraced branded sound in marketing.
Intel arguably started with what some consider the first official sonic logo (although I don’t think they even called it that at first). They made us “need” an Intel Pentium Processor Chip in our computers. How? By repeating their iconic 5 note mnemonic, or sonic logo.
Apple followed suit with an “accident” of sorts. Jim Reeks, Apple’s Senior Software Architect back in the 80’s and 90’s, snuck in the boot up sound most of us grew up with as a last minute replacement to the existing tri-tone sound. He saw it as a “don’t ask, apologize later” opportunity. That sound lasted decades.
Netflix’s extremely famous “Ta-Dum” was a very purposeful edition to the branding. The idea was to keep their audience remembering which streaming service they were on as they binge watched originals such as Stranger Things, Black Mirror, or The Crown.
Although some other tech companies use UX and functional sounds like Google, Tesla, and Facebook, it doesn’t seem like they’ve explored an all encompassing brand sound yet.
Tesla uses custom sounds and other forms of UX within their brand but not a sonic logo. As they run ads hardly ever, they seem to only stick with the functionality aspect of sound.
