American Express Futureproofs Their Brand with a Global Sonic Identity by Made Music Studio

American Express needed a brand solution to address the seismic behavioural shifts taking place with consumers as they moved to mobile, voice and audio-first technologies for purchasing. The iconic physical representation of the American Express brand - the card - was rapidly declining in use, and in 2019, the majority of card transactions were completed without an American Express card in hand.

With contactless payments quickly becoming the de facto method for payments and experiencing the American Express brand, their team came to Made Music Studio to develop an ownable suite of branded sounds. They needed an iconic sonic identity that day-to-day customers would come to know, trust, and recognise for years to come, across every brand touchpoint internationally.

Our final creative solutions were each tested, as part of our SonicPulse research, to ensure that we had significantly enhanced the emotional appeal of the brand as well as created an intuitive sound of pay that was positive and reassuring to consumers.

From across social media and embedded into all campaign ads, throughout the Centurion Lounge and at Amex sponsored event access points, hundreds of millions of people across the globe have heard the new sound of American Express...and counting.

In the highly competitive payment sound space, American Express is outperforming every other pay sound in the market on key payment experience attributes, including Venmo, Apple Pay and Visa. In fact, research shows that the American Express sonic identity transformed a typical, anxiety-inducing in-store transaction into a positive emotional experience for the consumer. Consumers were almost twice as willing to repeat the sonic experience of American Express versus that of Visa and Venmo.

There will be continued rollouts of the American Express sonic identity, including across all their pay terminals globally. The new sound of American Express is already on its way to iconic status, recognisable to consumers around the world.

Dive into the complete making of American Express’ sonic identity.