Audio branding

My role is as an analyst and strategist. I love getting to know brands – to trace how their character emerges from their music choices, and see how they measure up against their competitors in the same category. I know how audio branding works, both from my close study of assets in the field – hundreds of them – and my hands-on experience as head branding strategist at Adelphoi Music. 

If you are looking for brand analysis, competitor analysis and strategy on an audio branding project, or just want to know how it all works, get in touch.

Can the right choice of music help build a brand?

Absolutely it can. Music draws attention, it engages and charms, it soaks up associations, it lodges in the memory – and it thrives on repetition. Any brand that can make use of music should put some serious thought into how to use music consistently to build their identity.

Audio branding means building musical consistency for a brand – to support its identity with a music strategy that conveys a clear impression, rather than a confused hodgepodge. We have lots of different tools at our disposal:

     • single-asset strategies like sonic logos, longer tracks, brand songs
    • extended libraries of soundtracks ‘watermarked’ by a brand theme
     • multi-asset strategies, which look for consistency in terms of a common ‘character’ or ‘thread’, rather than a musical theme

This is not a one-size-fits-all business. It will depend on the brand – its categorysizeambitions, and marketing budget – which tool is the best for the job, and it’s crucial to choose the right strategy to fit the brand. 

If you want to dive more deeply into all this, just scroll down the page for links to my podcast and written work.


Podcast

My podcast series tackles the key questions in audio branding with honesty and a sprinkling of humour. There’s scientific nitty-gritty here, and arguments drawn from psychology and musicology, but above all there’s the evidence of the audio assets themselves – the successes and the failures – which offer the only real data we have about what works, and what doesn’t. What made Intel’s sonic logo such a success? What lessons should we learn from McDonald’s, or British Airways? How did sonic logos become a thing? Do they even work? All this, and more…


Papers

A rational theory of audio branding minus the humbug.
Papers on:
• Why brand fit isn’t the be-all-and-end-all
• Why unprompted brand attribution tests don’t tell you what you most want to know
• What actually makes a good sonic logo?
• How long do sonic logos last?
• Could there be a ‘softer’ alternative to hardline audio branding methodology?
• What kinds of meanings can sonic logos convey?