Audio Branding

“Don’t just produce a single ad, produce three or four ads that are all related to each other in a campaign, because you get that familiarity, you get that consistency, you get that storytelling narrative that spans a single spot and starts to reach across the entire campaign, and it’s consistent across touchpoints. But then when it comes to the sound, they don’t apply exactly the same rationality. And it’s just because we haven’t had the data that supports it. But now that we do, we can push it into the marketplace and hopefully start to support a very different decision-making process when it comes to sound in branding or sound in advertising.” – Joe Sauer

This episode is the second half of my conversation with audio research pioneer and founder of Emotisphere Insights Joe Sauer as we talk about setting the right audio budget for both moviemaking and advertising, striking the perfect balance between making an exciting impression and building a brand clients recognize and trust, and what sad music reveals about humans and AI.

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(0:00:01) - The Power of Audio Branding

Our discussion continues as we look at the audio budgets of both movies and marketing campaigns, and Joe reveals that advertising comes up surprisingly short in comparison. “If they’re spending less than half of what moviemakers are spending,” he says, “and they’re still generating audio tracks that are influencing behavior, imagine what they could do if they simply ratcheted that up a percent or two.” Joe tells us about some of the famous sonic branding projects he’s worked on, such as adapting AT&T’s famous audio logo to a global market. “Over the course of what felt like decades but was really several months,” he recalls, “we accomplished the task. We were able to reposition that brand effectively through sound, without losing any of the recognizability or the durable memorability.”

(0:12:58) - The Evolution of AI in Research

We discuss AI’s emerging role in research and how often branding becomes a balancing act between making a big splash and feeling like an old friend. “One of the things that we’ve learned through doing this type of research,” Joe explains, “is the extent to which familiarity, particularly with sound, but it extends to all forms of sensory input, familiarity really does lift emotional appeal.” He shares the example of an audio branding campaign for NPR he developed that had to strike the right chord between exciting and familiar, and the neuromarketing studies that made predicting success possible. “That conscious response had turned to positive once people got familiar with it,” he tells us, “but it accomplished the behavioral outcome that we were hoping, which was their demographics started to broaden and they started to get regular listenership from a younger demographic.”

(0:20:02) – Branding in a Changing World

As our conversation comes to a close, we talk about how the pandemic’s demand for a more somber approach to advertising ended up backfiring for many companies, and about one company that managed to stay ahead of the curve. “McDonald’s was out, way out in front of this,” Joe says, “and if you think about their logo, it’s very bouncy – ba dum dum da dum – you know? And a lot of their variations… really leaned into that bouncy, joyful, happy, carefree, insouciant type of feeling.” We discuss some of his latest projects, how AI data is transforming his research process, and what Joe calls the “tragedy paradox,” or AI’s tendency to see melancholy songs as bad just because they’re sad. “We’re looking at all sorts of different ways to implement AI on the research side,” he says, “just as musicians are on the music side, but we still haven’t found any substitute that challenges the fundamental precept upon which the industry is built, which is that you have to be human to have emotions.”

Episode Summary

• Sound’s often-underestimated power in storytelling and consumer decision-making.
• The challenge of bringing a sonic brand to new audiences while preserving its core identity.
• What COVID and the growth of AI have taught us about emotional branding.

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