Sound Branding

Try this. Close your eyes. Imagine. It is just after 8 o’clock in the morning. There is the sound of an engine sputtering nearby, above the hum of passing cars, trucks and motorcycles and their clanging horns; the spiel of hawkers parading their wares; shouts announcing various places in sing song voices (destinations?); blaring music from large stereos. The noise is a confluence of voices, music and ambient sounds. You can tell almost with a certainty, you are in a bus park, somewhere in the heart of Lagos, Nigeria…say Ojuelegba?

And then you open your eyes….

For those few seconds, in your imagination, you experienced this entity (in this case, a busy hub in the Lagos metropolis), through the unique interface of your ears. In this way, you have attempted to reconstruct the brand Ojuelegba through the sense of sound.

The mind is wired to interact with the environment with its 5 senses (sight, smell, touch, taste and sound). Through stimuli integrated from these various sources, the mind is fed and develops the dimensional representation we call the brand.

Therefore, to consciously craft a brand while focusing more on the visual experiences (visual logos, identity system, design and architecture etc) while ignoring other senses such as sound identifies a large gap in the branding experience. Although the above example allows us appreciate a place brand through sound, this kind of thinking can be extended to other types of brands as well.

For instance, when a bank consumer is using an ATM, we engage his visual sense as well as his sense of sound through the jingles or music that is played. By exploring other senses, the audience may be better engaged and a better articulated brand image may be created.*

Here are a few examples of how the sound component of a dimensional brand may be explored

• Sound logo: this is the acoustic representation of the brand. It may be used in conjunction with the visual logo (in multimedia for instance) or alone
• Jingles: radio, television or internet adverts for instance
• Corporate songs or anthems
• Ring tones (remember the unique ringtone used in the hit TV series, “24”?)
• Ambient music in the organizations facility
• Switch board music
• Cultural language used by stakeholders of the brand (e.g. employee branding)
• Sound of the brand’s name, products or services

The list goes. The important question to ask is “how does my brand use sounds?”. The idea is to mine each of the brand’s touch point for its potential as a sound portal.

*the word “image” does not imply visual representation. It is from the Latin root word “imitari” which means “to imitate”. Therefore the brand image is more accurately a replica of the brand in the minds of its audience.