Industry professionals ensure that sounds and music are increasingly used by companies for consumers to memorize products and services
Sound identity, or sound branding or even audio branding, is the use of sounds and music to create identification of a brand or product through audio, functioning as a signature – the most famous Brazilian example is perhaps Plim Plim, from Rede Globo. . The sound identity is a smart way to ensure that the brand is memorized and emotionally associated in people’s daily lives. We are impacted throughout life by different types of sounds and they refer us to specific moments we had. An example, to understand the impact of an identity, knowing that when listening to plim plim a program came back from the break or that a tudum indicates that an original production of a streaming service is going to start, summarizes Joo Netto, creative director at 3mais.
Guilherme Zomer, director of Filomena Studio, complements by summarizing that audio branding is the development of sounds and music that represent and transmit the values and messages of a company directly or subliminally in communication, which can be applied in videos, jingles, commercials or in experiences users in different ways.
For the creation of a sound brand, one should consider synthesizing the company’s identity, translating it into the choice of notes, the intention of the melody, its mood, the voice, the choice of that voice, timbres and textures. You may never have stopped to think about it, but to arrive at this result, which involves that consumer public, there is a whole concept behind it. Sometimes it’s just a single sound with a slogan, says Bia Ambrogi, president of Apro+Som, who adds that music branding can be seen in the phonograms created and commissioned by the brand, as well as in jingles and sound signatures. The jingles tell a story and the sound marks make the company’s signature and identity.
This view of the president of Apro+Som is shared by Diego Guimares, production director at S de Samba. Sound branding is a very broad concept and little used in its entirety. Indeed, an umbrella concept that has wide possibilities, but most of the time only used in one or two elements. It is about understanding the corporate identity of the company in its entirety and translating this into a sound identity to be implemented in all customer touchpoints, such as movies, radio, cell phones, points of sale, events, podcasts, voice assistants, etc. ., says Guimares, who lists the possible elements of sound branding: Sound logo: generally short, memorable (Intel and Coca-Cola are some examples); Sound theme: melodic themes that are repeated in different uses; Tracks: larger pieces of music derived from the concept of sonic identity; Soundscape: sound atmosphere or soundscape to be used in environments or media such as the internet;
Voice: when we link a certain voice to the customer and this voice is constantly used in the company’s communication; Jingle: when we sing the customer’s message.
Other possible uses would be the creation of specific sounds for products, or the creation of sounds for UX/UI experiences, adds Guimares, who also emphasizes that many sound brandings are created, but my perception that they only catch those who hammer for years in the our head. Those, yes, are unforgettable. A sound branding that lasts one or two years and is not present in all customer pieces usually falls into disuse. Show your strength Brazil is an example of sound branding in the form of a song we made for Banco Ita and it has been repeated for a few World Cups.
Fernanda Costa, sales associate at Satelite Audio, points out that with the frenzy of visual and sound information we are exposed to today, a recognized sound becomes an emotional connection almost instantly: the cuckoo clock at grandma’s house, the sound of the oven’s plinth. while you wait for a cake to be ready, or even a siren in the street. Each sound awakens and connects us to a type of emotion.
Five Notes
Giovani Marangoni, professor of the communication and advertising course at ESPM Rio, explains that brands are always looking for ways to be remembered and, for that, they seek multisensory stimuli to call attention. The most common and powerful is the visual stimulus, but the auditory stimulus has a great advantage, which is exactly that you don’t need to focus your eyes, because the sound is 360 degrees around the person. This is fundamental for brands, as they manage to attract attention even if we are not looking at the same place.
For the ESPM professor, Sound Branding producers already understand the concept of neuroscience and use a worldwide trend called Five Notes, which uses the five musical notes to create sound brands. The brain of a normal person, even if he is not necessarily into music, can diagnose the distance between one note and another, and neuroscientific studies claim that the closer the distance between one note and another in a melody, the more involuntarily the brain keeps . This explains the imprint of a sound mark on the consumer’s memory, even if he doesn’t want to and without the need for visual attention.
Trenzinho do Caipira
For Celso Piratininga Jr., partner and CEO of Adag Comunicação, every brand should think about developing an exclusive and strategic sound identity, as the possibilities brought by sound branding are endless. In a world visually stressed by multiscreens and content with strong appeal, of all kinds, the ears start to have an increasing relevance as a privileged channel of communication.
He tells a case of successful sound branding that Adag developed for the São Paulo Metro. The São Paulo Metr is a great brand and has been considered by Datafolha, for years in a row, the best metropolitan public service and the best public transport mode in the city. Despite all this interaction and all this prestige, the opinion of passengers about the Metro was not so good when the subject in focus was communication. The surveys carried out regularly by the So Paulo Metr along with its passengers pointed to a quality deficit in relation to the way it provided information and communicated in the environments of stations, platforms and trains. In other words, a negative perception. This led to the sound branding project for the So Paulo Metro. Adag created, produced and renovated, together with the production company Lgico Music, led by maestro Milton Min, the set of approximately six hundred sound messages emitted/aired in stations, platforms and trains (messages called PA Public Address). And, in addition to this technical content, he also created the new sound brand for the So Paulo Metro, inspired by Villa-Lobos.
(Credit: Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash)
Read the full story in the March 20 issue
