Audioland: Marketers must use sonic branding more consistently to reap the rewards asserts expert panel

Sonic branding has a tendency to fall off the radar for many marketers, a panel including Dentsu Creative CEO Kirsty Muddle and Eardrum and Resonance Sonic Branding founder Ralph van Dijk, has asserted at Mumbrella Audioland.

The panel also discussed how marketers can fail to use sonic devices consistently over time.

“I’ve seen sonic logos played at the beginning of an investor presentation to shareholders, and that sonic device has got all the equity of their success over the past six months,” said Muddle.

“It conveys the success of the business, and if you take it off the end of an ad you’re losing that equity over time.”

“It’s up to the CEO and the brand to be really disciplined and say ‘we have created this asset and we want to build this brand code'”, said van Dijk. “And in order to do that, it has to be a non-negotiable when it comes to applying these assets across all the touch points.”

Muddle, along with van Dijk was joined on the panel by Smith & Western Sound co-founder Nick West, and Canva creative director Elliot Struck.

West added that a brand guidelines were critical to ensuring brands used sonic assets correctly.

“It needs to translate across the work, whether it’s with a new agency or a new CMO, or if someone else is taking on the brand – we need to keep that heritage going.”

West also noted that it was the job of sonic branding agencies to ensure the creative works for everyone, so that is able to be applied in future campaigns and touchpoints.

“Every time you go out there with something new or you want to tell a different story, you need to be able to adapt the concept so that it still rings true, it still brings that brand through.”

The value of investing in sonic brand assets, and applying these across brand touchpoints, was conveyed by Struck, after Canva recently worked with Resonance to revamp its audio branding.

“We wanted something that captured our brand personality,” said Struck, referring to Canva’s brand pillars of human, empowering and inspiring.

He said that sonic branding was one “piece of a big puzzle”.

“When it’s accompanied by a brand visual, or a tone of voice, or a photography style, and each of those things have the same level of importance and come from the same place holistically, you create a really nice snapshot of the brand.”