Many companies spend hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars on marketing each month. But when it comes to sonic branding, they’re still hesitant to invest, if they’ve considered doing so at all. And these are smart, successful companies with strong marketing teams. There seems to be a comfort level spending on promotional campaigns, sponsorships and search ads, but when it comes to branded audio, companies hit pause.
In the following, we’ll look at why sound is often overlooked by brands, what it can do when used effectively and why sonic branding should be a key addition to your next marketing budget.
It’s a curious thing. You wouldn’t question creating a visual logo for your brand, but somehow creating a sound is something less concrete. In marketing, there is always comfort in spending where you can quickly see value.
In reality however, a good chunk of marketing spend goes toward brand awareness: creating content, improving search visibility, sponsorships and more, where value is most often measured in brand lift and audience buzz. And in this age of zero-click marketing, channels that were easily trackable just a few years ago are now much harder to quantify.
This is where sonic branding shines. Used effectively, sound can increase brand awareness by nearly 200% per System1, compared to 24% for your product or service and just 12% for your brand colors, making it one of the most influential brand assets in your arsenal.
So if brand lift and audience engagement are critical KPI’s, and audio can significantly increase both, why isn’t sonic branding more of a focal point?
Sound stigmas
There are a number of misconceptions about the role of audio within brands. Some of the more common include:
1) It’s just an add-on. Often, music and sound are treated as creative accompaniment, elements added to a video or advertisement to round out the emotion – and not seen for the longer-term value they can bring to brands.
2) Oh, you mean jingles? For many people, “sonic branding” still translates to “jingles,” those repetitive earworms designed to get stuck in our heads – which are often viewed as less desirable by modern brands. While jingles can be part of a larger sonic strategy, today’s sonic branding is much broader with unique sonic elements for different audience touchpoints.
3) It’s hard to describe. Unlike visual or tactile elements, people have difficulty translating audio into language. Often we borrow vocabulary from vision, touch, and emotion to describe what we’re hearing. This can make brand audio seem more complicated to define, causing many marketers to avoid it altogether.
4) They didn’t teach that in school. Despite nearly a century of use, brand audio is often not viewed as a core brand asset. Even widely used marketing textbooks limit discussions to “jingles” and “sonic logos” in the context of core brand elements. This can make sonic branding feel like just another marketing tactic rather than a critical brand component like a logo, colors, or tone of voice.
But sound is so much more powerful for brands than many give it credit.
Sonic branding for today’s brands
In today’s terms, sonic branding is the audible identity of a brand, how you sound across all channels and touchpoints and a complete sonic identity may include:
- Sonic logo – a short, recognizable mnemonic that pairs with the visual identity (think McDonald’s “Ba da ba ba ba” or Netflix’s “Tudum”).
- Brand anthem – a longer-form musical expression of the brand that can be adapted for campaigns, promotions and content.
- Sound library – branded sounds such as notifications and cues for use in apps, webpages, products, and services.
- Sonic strategy – creative guardrails that guide the selection and use of music (e.g. genre, tempo, instrumentation) in advertisements, content, social media, and other communications.
Essentially, wherever a brand can be heard, there is an opportunity to connect deeply with audiences. And as with all branding, consistency matters. It’s hard to build recognition by changing your brand assets every campaign. Yet many companies do exactly this with audio. The music might express the emotion of a piece beautifully, but if it’s always different, how is it communicating your brand?
Why sound matters more now
Marketers have more channels than ever to communicate brand messaging – and distracted audiences have more content competing for their attention. We have less time to earn that attention and even less time to hold it.
Sound has a unique advantage in this environment because it doesn’t require a view. It works while people are scrolling, driving, shopping, exercising, or simply going about their day. It’s also processed quickly, and deeply connected to emotion and memory – essential for brand recall. That allows brand audio to make a meaningful impression in milliseconds.
Yet most brands aren’t taking advantage of it. An Ipsos study found that fewer than 10% of advertisements used branded audio. However, ads featuring branded audio were 8.5 times more likely to rank among high-performing ads with strong attention and engagement.
In other words, sonic branding is one of the most effective – and least utilized – brand assets available.
With that kind of upside, you might assume sonic branding requires an enormous investment. But compared to a full marketing budget, the math tells a different story.
Run the numbers
Consider two different brands, neither of which have a sonic strategy: Company A) a large enterprise brand with a $180M annual marketing budget ($15M per month), and Company B) a mid-market brand with a $4.2M annual marketing budget ($350K per month). While creation of sonic identities can vary from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, let’s assume a comprehensive sonic identity package at $100,000, or 0.06% of the budget for Company A and 2.4% of the budget for Company B.
Depending on how close these budgets are to yours, that may initially sound significant, but sonic branding isn’t a one-time campaign or media buy. It’s an owned-brand asset designed to amplify awareness for years to come.
When amortized over a five-year span, for example, Company A will spend $900M on marketing assuming no major changes to the budget, and Company B will spend $21M. In that time, the sonic identity will account for only 0.01% of the spend for Company A and 0.5% for Company B. And in that time, their sonic assets will work continuously to connect and strengthen all marketing activities, making individual campaigns more recognizable, improving brand attribution and building familiarity with every use.
Similar to a visual identity, you can’t always point to a simple ROI calculation for sonic branding, but its value shows up in the things marketers already care about: awareness, brand lift and audience buzz. Whether you’re investing $21M or $900M in marketing, engaging with audiences more effectively creates significant value.
Most brands are already paying for music and audio production, but without a sonic strategy, these investments don’t tell a cohesive story. Sonic branding is cumulative and a brand asset that becomes increasingly recognizable and valuable over time.
When you put it all together, sound is one of the most powerful tools brands have for building long-term awareness. Wherever your audience can hear you, there’s an opportunity to connect more deeply while making your brand more recognizable. The numbers speak for themselves. As you dive into budget planning, maybe this is the year to make some noise.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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