If you are still unsure how a more effective use of sound can help build brand equity, then listen to this new offering from those people at Axe. Get past the adolescent maleness of the clip, and focus on how sound has been brilliantly utilised to shape the consumer experience. Use headphones when listening to the clip.
After all, as citizensound keeps on saying, brand experience doesn’t have to be just visual.
When we describe the business value of Sonic Branding to clients, inevitably conversation gets round to comparing our approach to creating the sonic identity of a brand to the work involved in creating the VISUAL identity of a brand.
There is nothing more visual in the visual identity of a brand than the font. And I love fonts. Be they the classics like:
ones used on album covers,
even a musician’s own hand-writing… (found here if you want to contact them Morrissey)
I recently came across this fantastic offering by those clever people at typeradio, a radio channel on type and design, based out of Den Haag. I recently listened to a insightful discussion they had with Phil Baines.
Typeradio’s position is simple:
Type is speech on paper.
Typeradio is speech on type.
The Sound of fonts. lovely.
Been contemplating the sound of bells. Not the whiskey (not a fan) the big things that hang from churches…
Now I am not someone who is a fan of campanology.
I am fascinated by the role that church bells have played within certain communities.
These seems to be three purposes for the bells. A time-keeper, a way of gathering people together and a signal for people to scatter.
The chiming of the bells have shaped many communities’ days. The bells were the community time-keeper.
When not setting time, certain chimes signaled a call to prayer, where the local community would gather.
Other sounds, out of sync with this fixed sonic calendar, would raise the alarm within the community, warning the townspeople or flooding, attack or other such dire situations.
Tip for brands thinking of a sonic identity
When considering the sound of your brand, consider the roles that sound will play. A simple bell has played numerous roles in certain societies for centuries. The danger for brands is that the sound you have presently might be sending out the wrong signal to your community. When you think you are gathering in your potential ‘community of brand fans’, you might actually be getting them to run away as fast as you can. It might be time to listen to your brand more carefully.
Robert Wolf, London musician and drumming teacher to my son, is finishing up his album right now. Getting noticed is a big challenge for every musician, but there was something he said to me today that really resonated.
He said is is going to make his music
sound irresistible
How many musicians aim for that?
In fact, how many brands aim to sound irresistible these days?
Well, we at citizensound are on a mission to help brands sound irresistible to their consumers and help musicians sound irresistible to their fans.
So I guess we want to sound irresistible too…
here is our sound by the way…
Spending some time in Lisbon recently. A city that could be defined sonically by the cars rumbling over the bridge, the sound of the Tram bell, or this, the sound of a man calling out for people to buy the lottery ticket near to the fantastic Santa Justa lift…
I have been experiencing the highs and lows of easyjet recently.
The Easyjet Low:
A 1950 flight from Madrid to London Gatwick gets delayed for 70 minutes because the guys checking the tickets at the Gate let on a passenger who was heading to Luton, not Gatwick. It took a while for the ‘extra’ passenger to be tracked down and taken off the flight. We get to Gatwick as the thunderstorm hits the airport, so we get redirected to Stanstead! There, the pilot parks up then offers the passengers two choices:
Option 1: We fuel up and take off immediately for Gatwick (the weather had cleared by this time)
Option 2: We get off at Stanstead then take coaches back to Gatwick.
As all hell breaks loose on the plane, with people at the front dictating terms to the pilot, whilst we sit at the back, the pilot then announces that three people want to get off the plane (Probably live in North London and couldn’t believe their luck!) He says he cannot force them to sit on the plane, so therefore EVERYONE has to disembark. So we then face another long wait for a bus to take us to the terminal, then a longer queue to get through Passport control (well it was around 2a.m. by now). Oh and no bus waiting for us. Given I had my car at Gatwick, i had no choice but to get in a cab firm who thought Xmas had come early (Yeah mate, that will be £128 to Gatwick…). Shared the cab with three others, got my car and got home around 4:45a.m.
The EasyJet high
This week I flew from Lisbon to Paris with Easyjet. As we were taxiing towards the terminal, Easyjet put on this music
The Sound of Easyjet
Now this is clearly the Sound of EASYJET that the company wants to leave with us. Uptempo, positive, fun. This would have worked for me but for two things…
First, it conflicts with other sounds of easyjet I head on their planes (so no consistency)
Second, I still hear that crazy pilot in my head offering passengers that choice…
Harrod’s. The Bazaar for the rich and famous.
Harrod’s Sale. Not like any other sale. So true.
I popped in today to have a listen to the shop. Entered through the main entrance and came upon the Sale Room full of Perfumes. It was shock and awe on my sense of smell.
Then the sense of sound kicked in.
As the room was filled with noisy people grabbing D&G Skunk spray and the happy sounds of disco house.
You could almost be at a bad night in Ibiza…Bizarre Bazaar indeed…
Probably the best known example of the music to an ad being turned into big hit is the Coca Cola ‘Hilltop’ ad of 1971. The jingle ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’ became the global hit ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’.
However, one I came across recently is this.
Is seems that Richard Carpenter saw this ad and thought it could be turned into a song. With sister Karen singing, it turned into a massive hit a year before Coca Cola did the same thing with The New Seekers…
Slight problem though, who remembers Crocker Bank?
So how do you make FMCG brands interesting in the digital space? What is the reason to go to newtoothpaste.com?
We all buy fizzy drinks, baked beans, toothpaste and washing powder, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of products you’d think about googling to find out more.
Beinggirl.com, which is aimed at a young teen audience, gets around this problem by keeping Proctor and Gamble’s female sanitary products (such as Tampax, Always and Alldays) firmly in the background, but instead provides a forum for teenage girls to find out about and discuss their problems and interests. The site, now available in 21 countries around the world, includes plenty of helpful advice for teenage girls about their bodies, sex and relationships, plus simple beauty tips, fun online games and you guessed it, music.
The music content on the site revolves around providing the latest audio and video clips from the likes of Akon, Lady GaGa, Taylor Swift, Sugababes, Jonas Brothers, Ashlee Simpson and Kate Nash, a pretty good selection of artists for the target audience.
However, there are a number of areas where the site’s music strategy falls down:
When we launched soundsearch, our bespoke music search and licensing facility, just over 12 months ago we wanted to deliver something different to the marketplace. We don’t have a fancy computerised system, but what we do have is over 40 years of music business experience and a huge collection and knowledge of music that can cover almost every base and genre imaginable. And to prove it, over the last year we’ve had to track down a wide range of music - from a collection of Arabic and Indian music for a series of compilation albums for a client in the Middle East, to finding and licensing an obscure 1920’s recording about Watermelons!
Our latest sampler in the “It All Ads Up” series will give you an idea of range of music we can deliver - highlighting some of the great new music that is tickling our fancies at the moment, that also brings together of those musical treasures that are hidden at the back of our collective record collections!
This latest podcast includes music from the Superimposers, Fanfarlo, St. Vincent, School Of Seven Bells, Faunts, Fever Ray, Trost, S-Tone Inc, Speech Debelle, Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, El Michels Affair, DJ Sheepdog v The Gossip, The Soaked Lamb, Yael Naïm and the Orchestre National de Jazz, Notty Culture, Quantic Presents and O Yuki Conjugate.
We hope you like the music. If you want more information about soundsearch contact mariana@citizensound.net
To listen now:
To download the podcast:
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