Thursday August 03, 2006

Sonic branding, the mashup version

When I introduce the concept of "audio branding" to people unfamiliar with it, one of the easiest ways to talk about it is in terms we're already familiar with -- you know the Intel chimes, the Yahoo! logo, and you want to teach the world to sing. At its simplest, purest form, it's a way of creating sounds that suit the brand for strong identity in an otherwise overbanded marketplace.

Alternatively, it's just as easy to demonstrate the role of sound in our lives when you talk about sounds that clearly don't fit a brand: imagine, for instance, a Rocky soundtrack written by Barry Manilow. or Tony the Tiger that featured the voice of Clara Barton (Where's the Beef!)? Or a Harley Davidson that zipped down the street with the sound of an electric scooter. The cache that we associate with these brands would be about as flat as Floyd Landis' cycling future.

Fortunately, someone's taken the time to do some real-world subverting for us. No, I'm not talking about your call-center -- which I guarantee is losing you customers right now -- but something a bit easier to laugh at: music for Gap commercials that didn't make the cut. Happy lunch-hour clicking.

(As for that call-center your company uses: go ahead, I challenge you to give it a ring and sit through it like a real prospect or existing customer would. Does the system -- decision-tree, voices, music -- work for you or against you? Are you gaining brandshare, customer loyalty and revenue? Or losing it? If the answer is the latter, don't worry, most of your competitors probably haven't caught onto their problems, either. But they will soon...)

( Aug 03 2006, 11:38:01 AM PDT ) Permalink