Table of Contents
Well, if a visual brand is all about how your brand is seen, then sonic branding is about how your brand is heard, Sonic branding is been around for a very long time. but recently due to the fact that more and more people can now produce videos and produce podcasts.
Sonic branding is really coming to its own because more people are coming to think about the audio side of their brand than ever before, there is alot of different ways that you can build this out and different things you can use to develop your sonic branding.
In this post, i am going to write about a few things, you know on what sonic branding is, but also give you a few ideas on how you can build out as part of your brand.
So everything you do from the music that you use, to the sound effects that you use, to the voice over that you have, the people you choose to do voiceovers, and the way that you use your voice in vidoes or podcasts all comes together to form your SONIC BRANDING.
Think of things likle the sound, when you start your playstation up, or the intel inside advert form the nineties or those annoying, but suprisingly, memorable gocompare adverts, all of these use audio elements or sonic branding or audio hooks to knid of you know, make them more memorable and build out that brand and that experience.
If you look at any Coca-Cola advert, you are bound to hear things like the ring pool and how they have accentuate the opening of the ring pool or the way that the ice hits the sides of the glass and the fizz, the bubbles popping, all of these has been done deliberately in other to build out a soundscape that helps to describe the coca-cola brand.
Well, as with all brand building, you trying to build something in the mind of your audience that is memorable, distinctive and iconic and then elicits a gut feeling or association that connects your audience to your brand, now there is no better way of doing this than using sound.
Now, using sound, if you have ever gone to watch a film or any sort of TV program, and you have managed to turn the music off of a film , it really does seem bland. it seems like there is nothing going on and you don’t know what to feel, the music almost in films tells you what to feel and how you should be feeling and brands that are clever and use sonic branding the right way.
What they do is they help to take the viewer or the listener on a journey and allow them to understand what they should be feeling and this adds a layer to your brand where you can add that extra thing that really talks to your audience.
If your brand is based on a personality type of say the jester, jester the archetype or the hero, you can really use that in the music that you use, so you can already imagine if i say to you the jester archetype, the kind of fun, loving kind of playful type character, you can also imagine some sort of soundscapes and sound effects that might go with that brand.
If you say the Hero type archetype, you can imagine the sort of music, the thiumphant kind of sounds that could be used to get that accross with your sonic branding.
How Does Sonic Branding Fits Into Your Wider Brand Identity?
Well, as with all sort of elements to your brand identity, it wants to be consistent, it wants to make sense with the rest of the elements of your brand and it wants to do it in a way that compliments your brand as opposed to dominates it, so you can imagine from the previous point, like i said, if you are a hero brand archetype that the soundscape or the sonic branding wants to make sense with your internal brand.
So, if you are the hero archetype, a slow meandering harp, is not going to be the right sound for a hero sort of brand, whereas for a caregiver type of brand, it might be, so it wants to make sure that the sonic branding is still appropriate with the particular brand. it makes sense for the internal brand and it also adds a sort of an audio backdrop to allow the visual brand to plan.
Where Can You Start With Sonic Branding?
If you look at some of the TV ads and look at some of the ads on the streaming platforms, take note of what they are doing and what people are actually using and how they are using audio to build their brand.
Think about what emotions or feeling you are trying to create with your brand , you know, is this mysterious and elusive? is it heroic and triumphant? is it fun ? is it caring? and then think about the sounds and the instruments that you could use to convey those particular feelings and emotions, you know, are they natural sounding? is it electronic ? is it very sort of organic and tribal and also drum based? is it upbeat? is it fast paced? is it tempo change?
All these things can be used to add colors and variations to the particular brand, your brand and the feelings and the emotions you are trying to create, maybe a brand would benefit from using a sort of a lot of silence or really faint sounds or potentially speaken word, or even operatic choir
Anything is possible for you to use to get sonic branding side of your brand done and get it handled and effectively communicated so that it resonates with your audience, but its still in keeping with your existing brand.
You do not wnat to make sure that this fits in with your existing brand and is something you can be consistent with, there is no good in sort of setting up your sonic branding at the beginning but then it’s something youn can’t follow up on, or you can’t be consistent with.
So make sure whatever you do, whatever you use for sonic branding, you have an idea of what you are trying to create so that you can replicate that down the line and you can keep adding to it as you need to, whenever you do sort of a new video series or you do a new ad, you can tweak it slightly, but it’s still in keeping with the previous sonic branding and your actual overall brand as a whole.
