Nine in ten TikTok users recognise that sound is necessary to the TikTok experience.
If you aren't using this to your advantage yet, you're missing out big time!
Here's what you need to know about sonic branding and how to use it as part of your marketing strategy.
1. What is sonic branding?
Could you recognise a McDonald’s ad if you only heard the last bit of it (you know, the whistling part)? Or can you recognise the sound that comes before an announcement at the supermarket?
These are examples of sonic branding. Sonic branding is what logos and graphic strategy are, but for the ears.
It’s sounds that, when your audience hears them, remind them of your brand.
Just as graphic design, sonic design is a very extensive field, and there are a lot of important aspects to an effective sonic strategy.
Usually, a sonic strategy revolves around a DNA sound (the simplest version of your sound branding), around which everything is built: logos, jingles, etc.
To stick to the same example, here are different versions of McDonald's logo, all with the same DNA.
2. What makes a good sound logo/jingle recognisable?
Users are able to remember brands over 8x better when they associate them to a distinctive sound rather than to slogans and logos... But that number can change depending on how effective the sounds are.
There are a few important things to keep in mind when designing a sonic strategy:
- Personality: The sound logo needs to match your brand’s personality. Should it be light and friendly or modern and upbeat? It needs to be as much a representation of the brand as the visual logo is.
- Catchiness: The sounds you use should be memorable to your audience. That’s the point of it all, isn’t it? So make sure your sonic branding will stick in your audience’s mind.
- Originality: Just as you wouldn’t want your logo to look like another brand’s, you don’t want your sonic branding to be too similar to any other on the market.
3. Why you should care about sonic branding
Here’s a very important fact to know: sonic branding is less popular than visual branding. At the moment.
What does this mean for you? It’s a huge opportunity to develop your own sonic strategy before the market becomes too saturated.
Think about it: how many brands do you know that have a visual logo? And how many have sonic branding?
TikTok itself recommends focusing on sonic brand as much as on visual branding. In fact, these are some of the obvious advantages that derive from using sonic branding:
- Brand recognition from customers
- Differentiation from competitors
- Emotional engagement from customers
TikTok is the most popular social media at the moment and the most profitable for advertising. This is an advantage you can’t miss out on.
Be one step ahead of everyone else!
4. Where to get your own winning sonic branding
There is a lot of research involved in creating the perfect sonic branding. And if you’re not a sound expert yourself, it’s likely you will have to struggle for quite a while to come up with a sound that works.
And how can you make sure it is the right one if you don’t have enough experience in dealing with them?
But don’t worry! We’re here to help you. We have recently introduced a new service from our professional studio to include original audio in your UGC videos.
As the sounds are created by a professional, you don’t have to worry about the audio quality (everything included in point 2) and the time it takes for the sounds to be created! We deliver time at the same time as we do your UGC videos.
You can apply sonic branding to your strategy right now! When you commission video content with us, simply select the option to get original audio.
Your marketing strategy will be much stronger!