Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

We’re designers and brand stewards — we engineer perceptions. Given that, what do we know about sound? What don’t we know about sound? How can we use sound to create meaningful brand experiences and build brand value?

That’s what my Sonic ID colleague Martyn Ware and I explored in our recent DMI presentation in Cincinnati.

Here’s our presentation — enjoy!

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Stay tuned for more. I’ll be adding audio and writing up some of the more interesting audience questions later in the week.

– Noel Franus

We define “sonic branding and identity” as the intentional use of music, sound, voice and silence to create a connection between people and organizations. Often one of the easiest ways to illustrate this is with the audio logo or sonic logo — the short identifier that brands often use as a brand signature or mnemonic. Mention the Yahoo! Yodel or the Intel Inside bong and people get it.

That’s the upside — but as with all good things, there’s a downside too…the risk of the C-word: commoditization. Today, for example, you can download your very own “sonic logo” in minutes for a few bucks. Yep, we’re talking stock photography, only with guitar.

More serious, however, is what the sonic logo can’t do. It can’t reflect the full breadth of a brand and its intentions in the experiences that matter most to customers. Once you step back and consider not what your brand sounds like, but how people experience it, the game changes. While many brand impressions are first seeded in advertising, it’s the first-hand experiences that customers have with your products or services that form lasting impressions.

For example, Harley customers don’t love the brand because of its commercials (do they even advertise?). They do, however, appreciate the unique hum and vibration of their hog, which you can hear from blocks away. This has nothing to do with sonic logos, advertising or even traditional marketing, yet this sound is a powerful brand asset for the folks at Harley.

Other product experiences that are driven or enhanced by sound (top of the mind) include the Apple and Windows startup sounds (as well as their error sounds); Nokia and Palm mobiles; heck, even a can of Pringles has its own sonic drama which is arguably more powerful than formal marketing.

Cities themselves have their own sonic identities, too, which we’ve written about before. Take the entire soundscape of the city of New Orleans. Or “Mind the Gap” in the London Underground.

Even Ford is getting into the game by quieting the rattles inside their cars, something BMW’s paid attention to for years, and which has a big impact on the balance sheet.

I get the feeling a sonic logo might not address that issue very well. But this is, however, something that sonic branding practitioners — and experience designers of every flavor, really — should be capable of doing. Solving problems. Building engagement. Making meaning.

This is what clients should demand with every sonic branding effort. Not just what can I sound like?, but how can I build brand faith everywhere my brand lives…across the end-to-end customer experience?

Otherwise you might as well grab that logo by the download. It does, after all, play a useful role. And hey, it’s fast and cheap. What could possibly go wrong?

– Noel Franus

Hear ye, hear ye, fans of sensory branding: Sonic ID will be in Manchester for b.TWEEN this weekend to explore the cutting-edge, converging boundaries between sound, art and commerce. Innovative brands take notice…

Does art exclude commerce? Can what works in the gallery work in-store? Are public installations models for future commercial applications? At b.TWEEN Sonic ID founders Martyn Ware and Dan Kirby will explain how experience gained in the artistic side of sound is helping shape the future of sensory branding, and leading to innovation in the commercial world.

– Noel Franus

Our second podcast is up: listen now. (MP3, 24 minutes)

In this second of a two-part interview with Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, Human League, Illustrious and Sonic ID) we hear about Martyn’s work with sensory design and immersive experiences in the healthcare environment. Also: what role does sound play in the recuperation process, and what can architects do to make life better for both guests, doctors and insurance providers?

Curious minds want to know. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. (MP3, 24 minutes)

Enjoy,

Noel Franus

• The dynamic duo at Audiobrain is featured in this month’s Fast Company. Nice job — great to see sonic branding and identity taking center stage in mainstream media.
• Martin Pazzani at Elias Arts has an interesting thought: too much music can dilute your brand. He’s right.
• And finally, my Sonic ID partner Martyn Ware (who’s populated this space recently) has an interesting new blog and podcast over at the Bowers and Wilkins website — part of its Society of Sound Lab. (Warning: clicking may suck you in for an entire afternoon.)

All for now. My podcast number two is going up this week. Stay tuned.

– Noel Franus

Photo by emurray

Professor Adrian North, the undisputed heavyweight in researching music’s effects on consumer behavior, has a new research hit. His latest finding: music enhances wine taste.

“White wine was rated 40% more zingy and refreshing when (such) music was played, but only 26% more mellow and soft when music in that category was heard.” Translation: sound affects perceptions — what you think, say and feel.

“Cognitive priming theory” might encourage winemakers to put music suggestions on their labels, says Prof. North.

I think that’s a great idea — and one that’s no doubt music to the ears of music marketers and licensed-music libraries. But I have to admit I wonder exactly how many people sense a need to hear their winemaker’s music suggestions. (Personally I’m all for it, but I’m far from an ideal demographic.)

On the other hand, all winemakers and retailers have a need to sell more wine. Let’s take it further and explore the role of music and sound at the actual point of purchase: what you hear affects what you buy and how you feel about that.

On a related and entirely self-serving note, we at Sonic ID are working with a fascinating luxury brand to explore creative options that address just that concern. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

– Noel Franus

> > Listen to the podcast now. (MP3, 22 minutes)

We’re finally pulling things together for our first podcast. This will happen weekly, at least on a trial basis. Our topics, of course, are sound, identity, design and brands.

What’s the role of sound in creating impressions, orchestrating experiences, and engineering perceptions? Where does sound fit in the larger design and branding world? Who’s using audio to affect change in interesting ways?

This initial podcast is the first of a multi-part conversation I recently had Martyn Ware of The Human League, Heaven 17, Illustrious, Sonic ID and more. In this conversation we’ll hear about some of Martyn’s recent work and his use of three-dimensional sound to impact perceptions and behaviors.

For what it’s worth: this is a prototype effort…no fancy sound effects or background music. I’ve recorded the call in Skype. It’s just 20 minutes simple conversation; the value’s in the content. If you like it, come back next week. If you have comments or suggestions, much appreciated.

> > Listen to the podcast now. (MP3, 22 minutes)

Enjoy.

– Noel Franus

Taking a brief departure from the land of identity to stray a tad off-topic…

Shh! Said the Billboard

Really like the decibel-o-meter that’s part of the latest AEG Electrolux campaign. You drive by and a sound-sensing billboard (supposedly) measures the current decibel levels on the street. All in an effort to remind you exactly how silent their vacuum cleaners are. As Marcel at The Amber Theatre points out, it’s brilliant because it’s a show-don’t-tell idea that inherently communicates.

Conducting computers in real-time

Ge Wang conducts the Stanford Laptop Orchestra. 20 laptops, six channels each for a total of 120 channels of sound…with fully live performances. Nifty. Here’s a tee-vee news piece on the group.

Yes We Can! Answer! The! Phone! 

And finally, just when you thought your Friday couldn’t get any possibly giddier, along comes Slate and their fresh batch of political ringtones featuring Hillary, Obama and McCain. Sure, this is tongue-in-cheek, but I see this as a great new tool in the war on terrorism; endless exposure to that “Hillary cackle” ringtone is guaranteed to make any terrorist wilt. (Quick! Free cellphones for the Taliban! Hehehe.)

Happy weekend.

– Noel Franus 

Photo by chuckp

If you’ve visited New Orleans, you know it doesn’t take too much wandering around to soak in the city’s sonic identity. It’s not something you can encapsulate in the form of a five-second audio logo, or even in one particular song or style of music for that matter.

I was fortunate enough to live there for a few years in the early 90’s. My head overflows with audio postcards when I drift back. Funky brass bands. Dixieland jazz. Funky blues. Cajun, zydeco, boogie-woogie piano, you get the picture.

You’ll hear all this walking the city in one day, but you’ll also likely take in the audio apparition of tankers and barges heading down the Mississippi just over the levee. Or the constant grind of streetcars, which can be felt in living rooms that are blocks away. Then there’s the rooster-hour hose-down of the Quarter’s streets, followed by a chorus of shopkeepers’ brooms as the city’s washed anew for just one more day. It’s a sonic collage that you’ll experience nowhere else on earth.

If you’re a fan of American music, you have this city to thank for sparking so much of the music we love today — New Orleans is the Giving Tree to which Rock often returns. And yet there’s more than music…that urban soundscape…that creates and reinforces our perceptions of a place most unique.

– Noel Franus

You may have noticed that the logo over there on the right side of the page is different. As of this spring I’m no longer with Elias Arts — I’ve teamed up with Martyn Ware and Dan Kirby of Sonic ID.

Life at Elias was outstanding—both the process and the people. Together we took giant steps in bolstering the strategic side of sonic branding and identity. Rayan, Fritz and Susan were especially stellar teammates in our regular efforts to push, twist, squeeze and pull the boundaries of brand-based sound, and in creating new sources of value for our clients. Many thanks, friends, for allowing me into your lives…I’ll see you in New York.

Sonic ID is my next adventure. I’m thrilled to join Martyn and Dan, who have been devising jaw-dropping work for BP, HSBC and AT&T (acronyms aplenty) out of the London office since 2004. We’re taking our collective branding / strategy / experience-design / composition / sound-design / and-yes-pop-star smarts and using them to grow Sonic ID in both North America and Europe.

The official pitch: Sonic ID offers strategic planning and creative development for global brands. We assist clients in identifying their opportunities with sonic branding, and we create sonic identity systems that unify a brand’s experience across its mediascape.

The parenthetical pitch: this is new territory for most companies, so I’ll unofficially recommend three relatively painless points of entry for curious organizations: 1) sonic experience auditing; 2) brand ideation and concepting; and 3) three-dimensional soundscape creation for retail, corporate, institutional and public spaces, events and experiences. Contact me if you’d like to learn more.

And on that note I’ll wrap it up.. Coming soon: a podcast interview with Martyn Ware. Our topic: sound design as a tool for change. Very interesting stuff, stay tuned.

– Noel Franus

News flash: fellow Sonic ID compadre Martyn Ware and I will be speaking at Syngery, the Design Management Institute’s Brand/Design 20 Conference. Dates: June 11-13, 2008 in Cincinnati. Topic: Demystifying Sonic Branding and Identity. We’re grateful for the opportunity, and given the line-up — with leaders from Marriott, Starbucks, Kodak, etc. on board — we can’t wait to attend. Looking forward to seeing you there.

– Noel Franus

The world’s atwitter over Muxtape. My friends at Mule and Substance suggest it’s the next sliced bread, but I’m still kicking the tires waiting to be really wowed. (Update: wow factor increases with use.) Nonetheless, your humble DJ Franux has given it hist best global-blues-funkytown mix — check it out or give it a spin and make your own. Happy Friday.

– Noel Franus

Photo by Libertinus

One of the areas most ripe for sonic branding/audio identity — or in this particular case I’ll call it holistic sound design — is healthcare. There’s not enough of it being done today.

Why? You and I are probably quite familiar with the idea that every little interaction, especially when well choreographed, can make or break the “customer experience” in a hospital. Eventually happy people become healthy people, who need less time in the hospital, and you know that’s music to everyone’s ears: patients, doctors, healthcare companies, insurance firms, governments.

What’s this have to do with intentionally applied sound? Let me state the obvious: just as visuals can impact perceptions and behaviors, so can sound…in sometimes more profound ways.

I should back up for a moment to make sure you know I’m not talking about traditional music therapy. This isn’t about one violin in a corner of the room a couple times a week (though that’s a start). It’s about thinking of the collective relationship we have with sound in the healthcare experience.

Quoting George Van Antwerp at the Patient Advocate site: One of the more interesting experiments I saw in architecture school was where some students set up a display where different areas of the building had color and sound that where activated by motion. The smiles and reactions from people were interesting. But, how often are we sitting down and mapping out the process and experience of the patient from open enrollment through different scenarios?

Sitting down and mapping out the process and experience…that’s the difference between making noise and making things better. When you orchestrate customer experiences that are both empathic and systemic — as IDEO, for example, has done time and again — you’re adding measurable value. And design is no longer a matter of output, but one of process.

Sound seldom plays an intentional role in the customer experience, mostly for three reasons: 1) “sonic branding” is usually mistaken for a cheap marketing gimmick (just add music!); 2) “sound design” is often seen as an artist’s toy rather than a business tool; and 3) people don’t usually change what they can’t see.

It’s time to approach the problem a little differently, with greater emphasis on all our sensory stimuli. We know that sound plays a huge role in how we perceive and experience spaces. We know that sound, as with other stimuli, can impact us physically and physiologically for the better. And a good many of us (ahem) have the customer-experience chops to pull it together in the form of an experiential playbook for healthcare scenarios.

To take Van Antwerp’s example further, this could mean a more pleasant door-opening; generative sounds for specific zones, times of day, or seasons; intentionally directed silence (especially in those blasted recovery rooms); and other acoustic considerations.

That’s a start. There’s much more to consider if you have the time to pour some energy into it. But it involves a much broader view of sonic branding than the Intel or Yahoo sonic logo. After all, brands sound like their bottom-line products and real-world experiences. Not just their ads.

And on that note…my partners and I at Sonic ID are working on a fascinating batch of closely related experiential projects for commercial applications. I can’t wait to tell you more. Stay tuned…

– Noel Franus

The Singing Revolution looks like a hit — this is the story of 30,000 Estonians who quite literally sang their way to freedom. Matt Zoller Seitz of the The New York Times sums it up best:

“Imagine the scene in ‘Casablanca’ in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of ‘The Singing Revolution’.”

Coming soon to a theater near you…

I’ve written another sonic branding / audio identity feature for the AIGA: “Sound Value: Creating an Audio Identity for Cisco.” It’s a case study, so there’s a bit more meat in it than some of the introductory pieces I’ve offered in the past.

I’m excited. As part of the vendor team, it’s clear to me that Cisco has some tremendous opportunities to leverage sound in ways that few companies can.

The creation of a systemic plan that accommodates Cisco and its wide brand portfolio — including Linksys, WebEx, Scientific Atlanta — means Cisco understands their opportunity isn’t to thoughtlessly infest our world with sonic logos, noisy ads and cute ringtones, but to increase brand linkage and emotional depth across these touchpoints in ways that visuals cannot or do not.

Looking forward to hearing this evolve.

– Noel Franus

Motorola seeks a haptics expert — someone skilled in sound and touch interfaces — to work on digital devices. Broad visibility, interesting problems, bright people. More in this PDF. Know anyone? Contact Elisa Vargas, Consumer eXperience Design, Product Centric User Interface Manager at Motorola: elisa dot vargas at motorola dot com.

Following up from my previous post “Secondary Players in Our Environmental Soundscape” … Grant McCracken has a terrific piece at his website and at the AIGA on the simple beauty of found sounds.

Preview: “The charm of found sounds is that they are not designed. They just happen. Not one thought to make them. No one was trying to anticipate what a middle age anthropologist wants to hear from his Coke machine, dish washer or ThinkPad. And this is charming because these objects become a kind of whiteboard. I don’t have to shift anyone’s meanings to attach my own.”

McCracken continues: “no meanings are always better than moronic ones.” It’s a very well written piece.

I’ve always been a proponent of context sensitivity rather than noise for the sake of noise, or sound for the forced, pushed sense of meaning. (Exhibit Brand A: can’t you hear us? We matter, dammit!) It’s refreshing to find an essay that so thoughtfully uncovers this important point…some things are just better left alone.

– Noel Franus

Photo by CoffeeGeek

Thinking this morning about sound and cognition in physical spaces. Yes, countless studies on sound and purchase behavior in retail environments await the curious, but let’s toss all that aside for a moment.

What’s on my mind today isn’t commerce per se, but the impact of the secondary players in our audioscape. In other words, this isn’t about the background music in a busy coffeeshop (which is unfortunately what conversations on sound in physical environments is often limited to) but the specific din of the La Marzocco humming away industriously, the chatter among patrons, the cha-ching of the cash register and the impact of these on our perceptions.

Can you imagine, for instance, how you might think differently about that coffeeshop if it took away its hardworking espresso machine out of sight or somewhere less audible? Might as well be an antiques shop, a church hall or a used books store in that case. Things go awry when our audio cues don’t match expectations. And this forces other environmental cues to work that much harder to achieve the notion of perceptive “fit” and appropriateness.

Envision a visit to New Orleans without the calliope pipes chirping away on the riverside (no thanks). A waltz through Manhattan without audible traffic (thumbs up). Or a visit to the dentist without those imposing teeth-grinding machines (way up). While these aren’t signature sounds, they’re experiential ingredients that for better or worse are part of our world. And some of them are things we can actually control.

Today (at least) I’m not alone in this meandering. Came across this New York Times piece on the role of phone conversations in a busy office: The Office Phone Call Was Music to Their Ears (registration required). In short: a busy office just doesn’t feel very busy or dynamic without all that sonic energy in the air. (Blame email and take-the-call-anywhere cell phones.)

You know where I’m headed. Today’s closing question can’t be anything other than: what primary and secondary sounds add to or detract from the places and spaces you interact with today? How? Why? What if our typical, expected sounds were subverted in some way to sound like things they’re not?

One more for you branding nuts: how are your customer’s real-world experiences working for or against intended brand perceptions? And which among those can be intentionally designed? For example, I’ll riff on the dentist-drill example; dentists work feverishly to produce a calming environment, get you relaxed, keep you happy. But then halfway through the visit that noisy beast inevitably rears its ugly head. Using a softer, gentler tool would be one step in the right direction.

Granted, it’s a small step, but those little things can add up. Together, they comprise this thing we call an “experience.” And as any of us interested in directing, producing or creating experiences knows, sometimes those little things matter.

Related reading: The Soundscape; Our Sonic Environment and The Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer. Enjoy.

Update: should you happen to find yourself in Belgium, check out Displaced Sounds in Leuven this Thursday March 13: “Expect unexpected sounds, exciting evenings where listening and hearing are the keywords.” More.

– Noel Franus

Continuing in the spirit of keeping it light this week, I’m obligated to point you to the Song Chart Meme photo pool over at flickr.

Now you finally know how Michael Jackson and Prince begin their songwriting process…

Happy weekend,

NF