Sonic Branding

In recent years, audio or music brand building seem to have found its combined sweet spot in the marketing world. More and more marketing campaigns in and out the Philippines have integrated music as part of their brand awareness tactics. 

For example, Coca-Cola utilizes its "Open Happiness" theme song to better depict the electric energy and joy that their Coke bottles explodes with when opened. Another is McDonalds and its completely memorable jingle, in which we can also sing along "Pa-pa-ra-pa-pap." With music retrieving better emotional response and audience pull, it seems that sound branding (or sonic branding) will continue to become a corporate vehicle to reinforce brand equity in the coming years. 

Businesses tend to invest more on basic brand elements, such as house style (logo, colors, and fonts), packaging, tagline and advertising copy. These are all visual outputs, and we can treat them as the core brand necessities for which they are the first to be seen and physically felt by our consumers. While it is right to invest in the visual appeal of your brand, as forward-thinking marketers, we have to realize that we can only do so much with how our brand looks. Every business should have invested in their visual branding, so why not take it a step further?

"Sound and music influence our emotions on a subconscious level. Visual information on the other hand, needs to be processed and interpreted by our brain before it gets meaning" (par. 9, Siteur, 2013). Music is especially good in triggering memories. While you can shut your eyes to not see, you can't shut your ears to not hear. 

In a personal perspective, the power of music helps us realize or even influence our moods - to motivate us and express ourselves in the community. With branding, we can either be part of communities or create communities with music. We're sharing experiences and activating them with music. And when used correctly, music can aid you in increasing brand awareness, differentiation, audience engagement, and complete the business objective of sales generation.

REFERENCE/S:
Siteur, W. (2013). Sonic branding (1): What is sonic branding?. Retrieved from: https://www.inperfectpitch.com/sonic-branding/what-is-sonic-branding/