Sound branding without sound

I have been working in Sonic Minds for two month this spring. They have given me new perspectives on sound branding and how sound branding can be viewed from a strategic perspective instead of tactical.

They don’t consider themselves as a Sound Branding agency but more as an “audible communication” agency. They state at their front page that "we do not make music; we make more effective brand communication. Sound and music are our tools."

I find this a very refreshing way of thinking a discipline that is "growing" and "almost accepted" - and have been so for too many years. 

From my corner of the world in sunny Copenhagen, I view the sound branding industry to be very much focused on sound branding production and the development of the "right" sound translation. It often comes down to bold sound that amazes people and sound that supposedly communicate certain brand values in three-six notes… if the storytelling was told rightly. 

Some people may find it remarkable that Sonic Minds have had clients that bought entire music strategies without getting two notes of music. This illustrates my point; that the real value rests in strategic audible understanding. 

Sonic Minds writes at the website: Sound that does not create value is called noise. To us that it is Audible Understanding. Almost everyone can make well-produced music but if the music is not an embedded part of a brand strategy it creates no brand value. Why should financially stressed companies by brand elements without brand value? 

The focus should hence be on performance rather than affect. 

The French company Sixieme Son has realized the same thing years ago.
Sixieme Son reads sound branding with weight on the word “branding”. They see sound branding just as much from a marketer’s perspective as the musician’s. This understanding is one reason how they have grown to become a brand of their own; they do not need to focus on cold canvas sales because companies come to them. 


I visited Sixieme Son and Michaél Boumendil in Paris in May 2012. They have a beautiful office on a nice location in Paris. The consultants have their offices at door level while the sound production team has their studios on the level below. 

It is like the division between the offices itself signals a segregation between the consultancy services and the music production. The two business areas require people with different competences, different understanding and different equipment.  

More sound branding professionals could benefit from working by the branding disciplines premises – not musicology. I see it as an exercise of making stronger brands by finding the right way to incorporate sound into the existing brand strategy. To find a particular musical expression from brand values, pay-offs or Brand Personality traits, etc. is an important but yet small part. 

Carelessness will be spotted instantly

I find a distinguished truth in the quote below. 

This is the reality in which communicators of all kinds work in today - whether one accepts it or not. To me this defines the important shift in preconditions that has happened in the last couple of years to (business) communication, marketing and branding. 

This may be a longer explanation of why Content Is King. But it also hold an explanation of why. 

In my opinion, everyone working with (business oriented) communication should reflect upon its message; 

Communication is a handicraft and its quality is valued.  

  

Making an effort has become worth the effort

The attention industry has come to an end. We all have had lessons of advertising analysis in school. Hence, we understand only too well the means of branding and we are not to be manipulated with. This may be one reason why we are described as being critical, conscious, and reflective consumers.

But the modern consumer has another characteristic, which is worth noticing when one is working with communication: They do it too!

A part of the modern Dane’s day of life is communication: We “publish” us selves all the time in various media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – or simply by mail and text messages. We use media to brand our selves (this much we have learned). It gives us a certain experience and expertise – and most importantly – the ability to make critical assessments, which we use when we are exposed to other’s communicative approaches.

It means that when we look at advertising on TV or see an advert in the newspaper we not only critically evaluate what is being communicated; but more and more how. And it is ascribed a value of its own to be competent in dealings with ones own marketing. This is mega meta.

The goal is no longer only to find or invent the unique thing that can tie the consumers closer to a brand, product, company or organization. The goal is also to deliver a sublime piece of crafted communication. The effort has seriously become worth the effort. 

Carelessness will be spotted instantly.

Written by Peter Boye, Partner in Mensch

Published in Market Magazine, Forførelsens Glemte Kunst, 14.02.2012.  

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This blog post is not my own text – I have only taken the effort to translate to English and share it with you. I hope my translation is as close to the intended meaning as (meaningfully) possible. 

The original text can be read here.

The dynamic brand

Recently CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide announced Marketing to be dead.

I have conducted a couple of interviews with communication and advertising agencies and I find a consensus that supports this rather radical statement. Marketing is certainly not as it used to be. 

Marketing as I was taught 2 years ago is based on a control with the brand.

To control the brand image I was taught that communication must be aligned throughout the various touch points. Manuals and guidelines for visual identities, internal and external communication, brand guidelines etc. keep the communication consistent. Marketing and communication strategies keep focus on goals and help explain the golden plan to win the market internally as well as externally. 

My marketing books were out-dated before I even got my graduation certificate. 

As consumers we are wired with iPads, smartphones, laptops, mobile internet and endless broadband and consumers twit, like, pin, share, criticize and complain non stop. Consumers expect constant connectivity - and constant access – to your company.

Not only does it mean that companies must gear up for an 24-7 on-demand reality, it also means that consumers' activity related to the company is a massive part of the brand image. 

Brand manuals, long term marketing strategies, and aligned communication in touch points is impossible to uphold. Control is an illusion. 

My teenage years were defined by the (at that time) upcoming Internet. 

In 1998 at the age of 15, I was chatting and surfing away. I found it perfectly normal to join parties, which were planned in a chat room by people who haven't meet IRL yet. I called up "friends" I had never met when I had a computer problem. My parents were amazed, my surroundings scared and my classmates turned their back on me calling me an anti-social geek.    

My adult identity was defined through digital networks and now, even I find it difficult to navigate through the endless list of social media platforms. If this is what I am feeling, the older generations must be terrified. 

I also find social media frightening, as I have no control of how my communication is spread. But the scariest thought is that it is not spread at all.

Marketing managers must become emotional thinkers  

Consumers expect news to automatically float by in the stream of free information. They do not actively go look for news (and will certainly not pay for it). This means that content that is not shared almost instantly will float by unnoticed. 

To maximize the shares, likes, tweets etc. the company must learn their customer's online behaviour and peak time activity. And more importantly think content as engaging emotional stories and not information. The company’s goal is to build empathy. 

Marketing may not be completely dead

To navigate in this volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex world companies must allow the brand to be dynamic and flexible. This requires a strong brand core that is present in all brand activity. This core relates the communication to the brand and makes it "brand relevant". 

The brand core can be many things; it is up to you to define it. But it is not a website or Facebook page, not a sound identity or a sound logo. It is a philosophy, a feeling, a way to act: The essence of the company’s very being.  

Guide for companies

For my Danish readers I want to share this brief guide for companies created by Dansk Industri and Musikzonen.

The guide is directed to companies that wish to exploit the potential from music to leverage brand experience and equity. The guide holds inspiration, information and facts about posibilities, prices and regulations.

Photo: Scanpix

The guide also gives examples of which communication touch points that may benefit from some special attention to the audible side. Further, it showcases companies who has already leveraged on their sound brand potential.

See the guide in PDF from Musikzonen and DI here

You can read the full article from Markedsføring from 24th April 2012 here

How perceived fit between sound and brand can be managed

Different management tools have been suggested to how brand managers can use sound branding to leverage their brand position. Sound logos, other branded sound, and the sound identity should be handled from a brand management perspective, where sound and music are seen as brand elements. Only then are managers and scholars able to assess sound branding in relation to brand equity. 

In the study I found that recognition and likeability of the sound logo and visual logo presented together influence directly on the perception of fit. When a combination of sound logo and visual logo is easy to recognise and is liked consumers rate a perceived general fit higher. Additionally I found that a subconscious fit between the sound logo meaning and brand meaning (measured on a set of attributes) not always correspond to the conscious rated fit. Hence, a sound-brand fit can be differentiated depending on brand, market and positioning. 

Here is a small extract from my thesis on how sound-brand fit can be managed according to positioning. The thesis can be downloaded from Boxnet here.

Audio Positioning Identifier

In 2007 five Swedish Master Thesis students from Lund University (Vonk et al.) suggested a sound branding tool for managers called the Audio Position Identifier. Using this tool, managers can identify the brand position on a matrix of Sound Branding Level and Strength of Brand Identity. 

Here I have included the different situations of sound-brand fits from my study in the model:

Depending on level of sound branding and strength of the existing brand identity, companies should focus on different types of fit between sound logos and brand. Five brands used in this study are placed under Brand Identity Focus where the brand identity is strong among respondents but where level of sound branding perceivably is low. 

Brand Identity Focus

Companies with brand identity focus should focus on creating a high perceived general fit primarily through recognition. It is important for the companies to link the sound to the brand and explicitly make the target audience remembering the sounds. Further, sound logo meaning should support brand meaning (and vice versa) by having as high attribute fit as possible. Companies with a brand identity focus must make an extra effort to create as many associations between sound and brand as possible to integrate the branded sounds in the brand and avoid it becomes an add-on. 

Lange & Dahlén (2003) argue that familiar brands can benefit from incongruency between elements[1] in advertising because it requires longer processing which enhance memorability of ad and brand. However as results showed sound logos may be perceived as being “brand-incongruent” alone by the audible nature when it is not recognized as being a brand element. This may be because a sound logo does not fit into the consumers’ existing “brand scheme” (Hung 2001). Consumers must first learn to add the sound to their brand scheme e.g. through an ad-campaign explicitly focusing on remembering the sound could be one way to draw attention to the new sounds. Making a game on e.g. facebook or mobile could be another way.

Minimum Brand Focus

MW has low strength of brand identity and a low level of sound branding according to the respondents and is hence placed under Minimum Brand Focus. They should create a high perceived general fit by focusing more on likeability. For an unknown brand, high likeability may create curiosity and aspire to learn more about the company. 

According to Vonk et al. (2007) a brand with minimum brand focus should first focus on strengthen the brand identity and secondly focus on heighten the sound branding level. I, on the other hand, believe that here unknown brands have a unique opportunity to properly integrate the sound with the brand identity from the beginning as an important brand asset and hence avoid the pitfall where the sound becomes a loose ad-on with no real purpose. From this point of view, attribute fit should hence be as high as possible to associatively bind sound and brand meaning together to create as high memorability as possible for the unknown brand (Lange & Dahlén, 2003). However, as we see with MW, the attribute fit is low and the sound logo hence may add additional (and important?) meaning to the overall brand meaning. This may also prove to be beneficial for an unknown brand. 

There are theoretical arguments for and against a high attribute fit for unknown brands but reality may give a different answer; a carefully measured sound-brand fit in relation to likeability and recognition for the specific brand in questions is most important.

Audio Focus

Companies having an Audio Focus, where level of sound branding is high and strength of brand identity is low, should focus on creating a perceived general fit by focusing on recognition. As with brands with a Brand identity focus it is important to create a strong link between the brand and sound in the mind of the target audience. 

Attribute fit should be equally high to the brand as the brand has low brand identity (hence brand familiarity) and information should be congruent to enhance recognition (Lange & Dahlén, 2003).

Integrated Audio Focus

Companies with an Integrated Audio Focus must first of all focus on maintaining a high perceived general fit through both likeability and recognition. Having a high level of audio branding there may be a risk of creating a wear-out effect. The mere-exposure effect has an up-turned U-curve which means that at some point listeners becomes tired of the sound or music and the sound begins to elicit negative emotions and associations instead of positive. 

To my knowledge this was what Nokia experienced with the Nokia-tune; whenever consumers heard the ringtone they had negative associations such as being disturbed, interrupted and stressed. The Nokia-tune now comes in different variations of musical expression, yet with the same recognizable musical “core”, in the various mobile phones. McDonalds has arguably the same strategy; their sound logo varies between every marketing campaign and between various countries. Sometimes the sound logo is sung or played by guitar but the musical core, the recognizable logo, stays the same. 

Such variations may produce a low attribute fit and an low attribute fit becomes a way for companies to ad additionally information to the brand meaning, avoid wear-out and through advert inconsistency force the target audience to more deliberately process the adverts and, hence, enhancing memorability of advert and brand (Lange & Dahlén, 2003)).

References: 

Winther, Julie (2012): Sound Brand Fit: A cross-modal study on the perception of fit between sound logo, visual logo and brand. Department of Marketing, Copenhagen Business School. 

Vonk, Berdine, Steenfat, Majken, Ejlertsen, Mathilde, Stoorvogel, Andre & Saarela, Antti (2007):  Breaking the silence – a managerial approach for companies to realise their audio potential. School of Economics and Management. Lund University.

Lange, Fredrik & Dahlén, Micael (2003): Let’s be strange: brand familiarity and ad-brand incongruency. Journal of Product & Brand Management, vol.12/7, p.449-461

Hung, Kineta (2001): Framing Meaning Perceptions with Music: The Case of Teaser Ads. Journal of Advertising, Vol. 30/3, p.39-49

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[1] Ad-message, product and brand

Sound-brand fit measurements

I am defending my Master's Thesis in a couple of weeks at MSc. Marketing Communication Management, Copenhagen Business School. This is what I have been looking at: 

The paper studies the fit between sound logo, visual logo and brand in a sound branding context. The cross-modal study is carried out on six Danish brands and their existing sound logos and visual logos.

The objective of the study is two-fold: 1) To study how the constructs of likeability, recognition, affect, brand knowledge and brand attitude influence consumer’s perceived general fit in the modalities of audio, visual and audio-visual, and 2) to explore how the sound logo meaning and brand meaning fit correspondingly on a set of brand personality attributes. It is expected that a high perceived general fit will result in fewer differences between brand personality attributes.

Likeability and recognition is found to influence respondents’ perceived general fit in the audio-visual modality, where the combination of sound logo and visual logo is exposed. For the attribute fit; two brands show high perceived general fit and corresponding few differences between brand personality attributes; another two brands show low perceived general fit and corresponding large differences between brand personality attributes; and two brands has respectfully low attribute fit and a high perceived general fit and medium attribute fit and low perceived general fit. 

The study also finds evidence that sound logos can fit with brands in more than one way. Depending on how perceived general fit and attribute fit are high or low, a sound logo can either support the brand meaning, add additional meaning to the brand, or devaluate the existing brand meaning. 

By comparing perceived general fit and attribute fit, the study finds that the unconscious attribute fit between sound logo meaning and brand meaning does not always correspond with a conscious rated perceived general fit. Hence, the two analyses provide complementary information to understanding a fit between sound logo and brand. When studying perceived fit in the future including an attribute fit measurement will provide fruitful insights to the results. 

Additionally, the study found that recognition mean values were surprisingly low when a sound logo is presented without brand context. It raises the question if consumers actually understand the sounds as being a representative for the brand; being a logo? This and the study’s implications for companies are discussed in the end of the paper. 

There is particular two things that I would like to discuss based on the papers findings; the differences between familiar and unfamiliar brands and how context influence perception of sound-brand fit. 

The paper will be posted here after my defence in ultimo March.

Sound logos and brands - an odd couple?

This month's magazine Kommunikatøren has printed my small article about sound logo associations and brand association based on the free association study conducted in the spring.


You can read it here in Danish (or try to copy the link to translate.google).

Video from Audio Branding Congress 2011

The third Audio Branding Congress took place in a full house at Columbia University New York City on November 17th. 
See the video from the congress here - be careful not to blink! You might miss my 2 seconds of fame. 

http://audio-branding-academy.org/aba/congress/report-2011/

With this year’s motto “Stay Connected, Sound Global” the congress focused on new prospects of building brands on mobile devices by using sound. Highlighting the event was the distribution of the first Audio Branding Award, for which the audio consulting group was selected in creating the corporate sound of financial services company UBS.