Five Australian Audio Companies Making Waves in Sonic Branding

As the media landscape continues to splinter and evolve, it’s easy to become infatuated with emerging technologies like A.I. or virtual reality. But the missing piece of your campaign might have been under your nose the entire time.

Sonic branding, brand development by means of audio elements, is one of the oldest forms of advertising. Like the jingles of yesteryear, good sonic branding burrows away in your head until a short sequence of notes or a three-second noise becomes synonymous with a brand or campaign, like Bunnings Warehouse, McDonald’s, or Netflix.

Having fallen off the radar in recent years, sonic branding is back with force in the Australian advertising landscape. LBB spoke to five industry leaders to learn more about the process of developing sonic campaigns, the collaboration of clients and sound-house, and the opportunity for Australian sound designers in the coming years.

At Resonance, the first thing a new client will notice is the company’s commitment to the brand, not the campaign. This is because, for Resonance creative strategist and founder Ralph van Dijk, sonic branding is a brand job - not a campaign job.

“It ends up being implemented into campaigns,” he says, “but coming at it from an advertising point of view is the biggest mistake of these projects. It needs a separate process, a separate skill set, and a separate methodology to be done right.

Typically with an ad agency, Resonance meets a client with a burning need for a sonic logo at the end of their campaign with a short turnaround time. But this doesn’t allow for disparate elements of an entire campaign to be brought together and complement each other.

When working on sonic branding for Canva, Resonance created audio assets for their web desktop app, mobile app, and for live events. Every stage of the user journey through a brand requires consistent audio elements.

“It’s just completing the circle,” Ralph says. It’s an opportunity for us to implement a complete brand audio strategy instead of just a logo at the end of an ad.”

According to Resonance, media fragmentation and attribution are playing into the hands of the growing sonic branding market. Fragmentation (the emergence of different platforms from TVCs to Tik Tok) presents both a challenge and an opportunity for sonic branding. 

“The challenge is how do we represent the brand consistently across each of those very different environments where the consumer is in a very different mindset. Sonic branding is a way of uniting all that communication.”

Even if you're half-watching or not paying attention at all, brand attribution allows for a brand to be instantly recognisable. Like a visual logo, a distinctive sonic logo is a huge asset to a brand. That little bite-size sound is shorthand for a feeling, and by investing in it, a brand supports instant attribution. One famous example is the McDonald's sonic logo, which usually accompanies the slogan ‘I’m lovin’ it’ at the end of their ads.

“Being consistent with sonic branding assets means that over time, your brand builds recognition and becomes more valuable, and their marketing more effective.”

In addition to brand consistency, Resonance targets appeal and emotion in its sonic branding. This means achieving a likeable sound that people won’t become sick of and understanding which emotions a brand is trying to elicit.

“We have to ask if it makes you feel a personal connection if it fits the concept. Other times we ask which adjectives one would use to describe the sound. We embrace this testing, it's a really interesting process.”

“Strategic setup is so important. That’s the bottom line. We take that seriously.”

If you ask Dan Higson about the fabled ‘return of the jingle’, he’ll ask you when it left. True, brands are more aware that their audio has been going neglected, but Smith and Western have always been innovators in Australian Audio.

“Ten years ago, you’d get a brand-Bible with fonts, colours, casting, tone of voice, and everything else about that brand in a big book,” Dan said. “You'd flick through it and go ‘Where's the audio?’ and the client would say, ‘What do you mean?’”

Audio is an integral part of a brand's communication with clients and customers, but Dan believes they are only recently investing as they should be in audio branding.

“Smith and Western have always been doing traditional audio post, but also have led the way with sonic branding in the region.”

Nowadays, Smith and Western’s time is mainly taken up with sonic branding, with each project taking several weeks. Something as simple as a sonic logo, the short mnemonic at the end of an ad which often accompanies the visual logo, can involve multiple iterations, usually evolving from the rest of a brand’s sound – also developed by the sonic branders.

The end result for Smith and Western is something like the Kayo sonic logo, which now feels like an essential component of Kayo’s brand.

“We ask our clients at the beginning of the process things like, ‘What emotion do you want to get out of the sonic world we're going to create? What are your brand pillars?’ because sound can make us feel a certain way, so we need to understand the brand really well before getting into the work.”

Smith and Western data suggest that really good audio enhances customer experience, and a 1.5-second sonic logo can increase brand recall by 38%. 

“We always ask our clients to brief us in emotion. So many of us think sonic branding is just that stamp of the end, but it’s much more. Multi-sensory marketing is having a real moment.”

While Rumble works across music and sound design, sonic branding has become a large part of their offering.

“I find Sonic branding generally is a musical endeavour,” says Tone Aston, creative director at Rumble. “Although sound designed sonic branding in the past has been really successful. We’ve created many projects for some of Australia’s biggest brands, from ANZ, to Bank West, and to Yellow Tail Wines across the US.”

In the last ten years, Tone has noticed campaigns have grown significantly in size, increasing the appetite for sonic branding at an agency and CMO level. This is good for Rumble, as Tone echoes the sentiment from Smith and Western that an audio logo is no slap-dash project.

“We believe that quite often, the best sonic branding starts not as the mnemonic, not as the three or five-second thing, but as a track. You give the mnemonic reason to exist. That then becomes your three or five-second mneumonic on the end, which becomes your sonic branding.”

Tone believes one of the key pieces to the success of any sonic branding, is time and repetition.

“The NBN, which was a combination of music and sound design, still connects on an emotional level, giving you feeling of warmth towards the brand and It keeps running on air. That’s a great indicator of its value and that repetition over the past six-seven years means allows a quick connection to the brand."

“We also created the Red Rooster sonic branding – quite a quirky sound that gives Red Rooster this personality and sense of humour that links their advertising together. More than just a mnemonic.”

Growing beyond a “bit of a niche industry”, Tone is excited by the boom in Australian sound production.

“Everyone in sound has an incredible opportunity to elevate the art of sonic branding and with more and more brands wanting in, we know doubt will.”

If you ask Andrew Stevenson, sound engineer and owner of We Love Jam Studios and Brand DNA Audio, he’ll tell you sonic branding is gaining momentum in Australia. A far cry from recent years, when “a lot of misconstrued ideas” around things like sonic logos and branding tended to negate the science of sound.

“Sonic branding works in partnership with a lot of other marketing ideas,” Andrew says. 

Like other audio houses, Brand DNA Audio understands that marketers need a lot of tools in their toolkits, and sound is one of the many brand assets. By understanding these brand assets, Brand DNA Audio can collaborates with brands to develop distinct sonic branding for a range of purposes, including telephone-holding music, music playing in a retail store, and even music for conferences.

“It’s all interrelated,” Andrew says. “It comes from a core understanding of brand attributes from the beginning. This way, we can remove a bit of subjectivity from the process. Great campaigns come out of great briefs, and great briefs have all those assets attached.”

Brisbane sound designer Ross Batten, who has been in sound production since 1991, founded Rosco Audio when he saw the appeal of working as a singular operator. Rosco organises the best people for each project to come together to create client-first solutions. 

“I can plug into a project and unplug when needed,” Ross says. “That means we don’t do a lot of sonic branding on scale, but it gives us a lot of flexibility. We work with musicians and sound designers when needed, so each project is its own boutique.”

This structure gives Rosco projects a distinct sonic flavour for whatever campaign element is required.

“It might just need a little three-second jingle for a sonic logo, and that's something I can do easily, but I love to get musicians to come in and bring their flair to the work. Music is such a big world, and so is sound. So I think if you want the best, you just need to go and plug the best people in.”

Most of Rosco’s work is ultimately in audio-post, including audio for brands. They specialise in voice recording and direction and pride themselves on finding new talent. Ross himself is very well known for his sound design.

“Sound design is making sound that appeals to you and tells a story. If you're making some sound for a hiking boot, sometimes a boot hits the ground and sounds like it’s slipping when it should be gripping – it doesn't sound right for the job.”

A significant component of sonic branding is consistency. Even when a project isn’t explicitly related to branding, it falls to Ross to maintain cohesion and brand values in his design.

“We use sound to give lots of different cues to try and tell the audience who a brand is, and in a short amount of time. Central to it all is communicating the client’s message auditorily.”