10 good pieces of advice on sound branding management (2)

Promised 10 pieces of advice for managing sound branding in the companies. Here are the last five. And remember; its not rocket science or breaking news - just things that I have seen companies tend to down prioritize or simply overlook.

Involve your target group

Do you know which touch points your target groups wants to hear sound? Or do you only think you know it? Music and sounds can easily become disturbing and annoying in the wrong setting, which will create strong negative association to your brand. Know your target groups, test your touch points and be willing to make adjustments along the way.

Create attention!

Customers are not as educated in recognizing branded sound and music as they are with recognizing visual marketing communication. Create awareness and attention and teach them to listen for your brand. One way could be to create an awareness campaign, a competition or involve them in creating, spreading and interacting with the music. 

Don’t stop – but consider buying earplugs

When you are inches of smashing every loudspeaker playing your branded music in the best Jimi Hendrix style, your target group has only started to pay attention. It will take time before your target groups have got the message and will begin to recognize and recall the brand from the music. Buy earplugs and keep going. 

Sound is not static

Implementation takes resources and time; so remember to take it into account when planning the process. When the implementation phase is done the music still has to be managed. Adapt, play, expand and co-create with your target group and remember that music is alive, evolving and dynamic – not static, complete, and lifeless.  

Accept that nothing stays for ever

Although your target group may not grow tired of it as quickly as you, their perception and preference will change due to new trends, media, behaviour, and normal mere-exposure and wear-out effects. Test your sound brand once a year; is it still contributing to your brand equity and brand image in the way you want? And are the touch points still the right ones?

10 good pieces of advice on sound branding management (1)

“How-to”s are so popular these days, so I made my own sound branding management guide.

Here are the first five advices to sound branding management in your company. It’s not rocket science, nor ground breaking revelations, but it is none the less things that some company still overlook or downgrade. So it cant hurt to repeat it again!

Get it right the first time
Find a sound branding company that has developed methods to control the creative development phase and standardized, objective tools to develop the music that fit your specific brand. A sound branding company should be able to document how they create the music from your brand input. It could be on the base of corporate values, a corporate vision, brand associations, a specific feeling or sensation etc.

Go beyond personal preferences
Decision should be based on objective information such as test results. Avoid discussions of personal preferences by testing the sound samples before making a decision on the final version. Tests could be brand-sound fit, association congruency, emotional profiling, sound-brand personality perception etc. But, pay attention to gut-feelings. Not everything that works can be measured, music touches emotions and sometimes it is not possible to explain why it is right/wrong.

Control the implementation process
Choose a sound branding company who provides Sound manuals. It’s a way to document the choices made in the process, visualize the project to other involved parties e.g. within the company and manage the sound cogently. A sound manual should minimum include a description of the creative development phase, a description of the music and how should sound like in the different touch points (e.g. in commercials, online, in telephone systems etc.) and who the responsible person(s) for the sound branding is(are). One could also include; situations where/if it is allowed to make music variations, and when and how it should be measured and benchmarked.

Be a big-spender, it will pay of
As with all things with quality and high value: It costs money. If you want music to be cheap, you will get cheap music. Customers are critical but not ignorant when it comes to estimating quality; they will sense the difference. Of course price and resources invested should match the level of ambition.

Educate your employees
Music can be hard to “grasp” and not everyone in the company may support it. Music will never be successfully implemented if it never gets out. Be sure to create support internally and educate them in how they can use the music in the touch points they are working in. For example if music is implemented in retail remember that the staff is going to listen more to the music than the customers. Involve them and turn into music-ambassadors.

The other five advices will follow shortly. Stay tuned!

ps. Please leave comments - Im interested in your opinion and feedback about the five advices!