Your brand already has a sound

The interface between experience, emotion and brand perception

By Imam Al-Waari · TRIOD

A brand identity project can make detailed decisions about a logo, packaging, typography and signage while leaving the sound of interacting with the business outside the brief. The app still sends notifications. The product still clicks into place. The store still has a door chime. Those decisions exist even if nobody considers them part of the identity.

Customers encounter them alongside everything the business deliberately designed. A sound might confirm that a payment succeeded or signal that a device connected. It might accompany opening a drink before the first sip. Some of these moments last less than a second, but their brevity doesn't make them irrelevant to the experience.

I think sound deserves consideration wherever it contributes to how a brand is used and understood. Commissioning a sonic logo is one possible response. First, though, the business needs to listen to what already happens.

[IMAM: Add one real project observation about a sound that was included in, omitted from or left outside a branding or customer-experience brief.]

Sonic branding is bigger than a sonic logo

A sonic logo is a brief audio signature associated with a brand. Netflix's ta-dum provides a familiar example; the company uses its sound alongside its visual introduction. Netflix's description

A sonic identity can organize a wider family of sounds. Mastercard's 2019 announcement described a central melody intended to extend into musical scores, sound logos, ringtones, hold music and payment acceptance sounds. The signature was part of a system with different uses. Mastercard's sonic identity announcement

Your product and environment may already supply some of that material. Opening a bottle of Coca-Cola releases pressure. Pouring it adds fizz and, if the glass contains ice, another set of sounds. These accompany consumption before anyone adds a composed signature. Coca-Cola has used opening and fizz sounds in its communication, including a Coke Zero Sugar campaign built around the product's sounds. Coca-Cola's campaign description

Carbonation isn't exclusive to Coca-Cola. Hearing a fizzy drink open doesn't establish that the listener recognizes the brand. It gives us two separate things to investigate: recognition of the category and association with a particular product.

A Bluetooth speaker's connection tone has a different purpose. It confirms an action. The designer can express character through the choice of sound and how it plays. A store entrance chime marks another event: arrival. For a regular visitor, it may become part of a familiar routine, even if the chime came with the door hardware and is used elsewhere.

The AirPods connection chimes and the sounds for switching between transparency and noise cancellation have become familiar to me through use. My previous Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones announced the mode they were switching to in words. That difference led me to stop using the Sony headphones in favor of the AirPods.

For me, the brief cues were a better way to receive feedback during an ordinary interaction. The spoken announcement gave me information, but I preferred how the AirPods communicated the change. That is my experience, rather than evidence that everyone prefers tones to speech. It shows why the way a product confirms an action deserves attention alongside whether it confirms it correctly.

These are different places where an experience becomes audible. A coherent sonic identity can connect them without requiring every sound to repeat the same tune.

The interface is getting smaller

A short clip, a push notification or a payment confirmation gives a brand a different space to work in than a full advertisement. There may be little time for a visual identity to register, and the person may be looking elsewhere when the interaction happens.

Sound can signal an event without requiring the listener to look at a screen. Brief interactions deserve deliberate decisions about sound. It also creates a responsibility to decide when an event deserves attention.

A sonic cue at the start of a clip can introduce the brand. A notification enters someone's day under the permissions they've allowed in their settings. Those uses need different decisions about repetition and intensity. Applying the same signature everywhere could make it recognizable and exhausting.

Sound can also be muted or masked by noise. Essential feedback needs another way to be understood by people who don't hear it. The design decision includes what happens when the sound is absent.

I would start with the purpose of each moment. A successful payment may deserve confirmation. An ordinary screen change may need none. The availability of a branded sound is insufficient reason to play it.

Sound doesn't arrive alone

Consider a hypothetical Bluetooth speaker. Its connection tone is pleasant, and the device initially connects as expected. Later, it repeatedly drops the connection just after the tone plays. Changing the composition would leave the customer with the same practical problem.

The tone reports that a connection has been established, but the customer needs it to last. What happens after the sound becomes part of the encounter with it.

Notifications expose the same issue. A gentle tone might announce a useful update or another irrelevant promotion. The composition stays the same while the reason for hearing it changes. If unwanted messages are the problem, making the interruption softer is a limited repair.

Sound can contribute to emotion directly as well as through experience. In two experiments, researchers found that the emotional character and placement of sonic logos affected responses to advertisements. That supports taking composition seriously; it doesn't establish that a pleasant sound creates lasting preference for a business. Scott, Sheinin and Labrecque's study

The strategic task includes both the sound's character and the experience surrounding it. Recognition tells us whether someone knows the cue. We still need to understand what they associate with it.

Consistency is not alignment

Take a hypothetical financial app that wants to communicate reassurance. Its notification tone and payment confirmation share a restrained musical character. The sounds belong together, but the app sends promotional notifications throughout the day.

The team has achieved consistency within the sound library. Whether the experience supports reassurance is another question. It requires examining the interruptions and asking users how they experience them.

TRIOD separates Internal, Behavior and Interface to make that relationship easier to inspect. In this app, Internal includes the governing decisions about when a notification is justified. Behavior is the actual message frequency and relevance. Interface includes the tone through which the interruption is presented.

If an engagement target rewards sending more messages, a new tone won't change that incentive. If the messages are useful and appropriately timed but the tone is harsh, an Interface repair may be enough. We need evidence about the failure before deciding where to intervene.

The business can govern these decisions. It can't dictate the audience's final perception, which also depends on personal circumstances and previous encounters.

Sometimes the sound already exists

A restaurant serving a sizzling dish has an auditory element within the product experience. A package may snap shut. A control may click when it reaches its intended position. These sounds deserve attention before the business commissions something additional.

Their value needs examining rather than assuming. The sizzle might contribute to the presentation, but the kitchen noise might make conversation difficult. A click might confirm closure, but it might be too faint to hear in ordinary use. Recording the sounds and observing the moments in which they occur gives the team something concrete to discuss.

That personal context matters. A sound can become associated with a routine that has significance to someone beyond anything the brand put in its guidelines. Designing for recognition and understanding those associations are related tasks, but they require different evidence.

An existing sound may deserve preservation or a place in communication. It may need less competing noise around it. Creating a proprietary asset is one option among those decisions.

Designed sound should tell the truth

For a product latch, the click needs to correspond to the mechanism engaging. In an app, a success tone should correspond to the stated action succeeding. These are functional promises that can be checked.

Other impressions need more care. A substantial closing sound may suggest quality, but it cannot establish the product's durability. A calming soundscape can contribute to an environment while the actual service remains disorganized. The sensory impression and the underlying quality need their own evidence.

I would be cautious about calling a sound an expression of reliability if the team has only tested whether it sounds reassuring. The product test and the sound test answer different questions. Both can matter to the final experience.

The Wrong Fix can sound beautiful

A sonic project can be well executed and still address too little of the problem. Suppose an app feels generic. A distinctive sound library might help if its interaction feedback lacks character. It won't repair unreliable transactions, and it won't resolve unwanted notifications by itself.

Before commissioning, walk through one actual customer experience and record where sounds occur. Note what triggers each sound, what happens immediately afterward and whether the person can mute it. Include the physical environment if it is part of the encounter.

Then check the assumptions behind the brief. Test whether users attribute a proposed signature to the correct brand. Observe whether confirmation corresponds to completion. Ask about the experience without supplying the intended emotional answer in the question.

This exercise can support different scopes of work. The evidence might justify a full sonic identity or one feedback repair. It could point to a technical fault instead. An existing cue may deserve protection. The findings might also support leaving a functioning part of the experience alone.

Silence belongs to the sonic identity too

A decision to remain quiet can be deliberate. An app can reserve audible alerts for events that need attention. A restaurant can reduce competing noise so customers can converse. A device can provide visible feedback for an ordinary action and save sound for something harder to notice.

Silence requires judgment too. Removing a useful confirmation may introduce uncertainty, while adding a branded cue to every action may create needless interruption. Listen under the conditions in which people actually use the product, rather than judging each sound alone in a quiet meeting room.

What are you teaching people to hear?

Sound interests me because it can participate in a moment the customer is having. Opening a drink is part of consumption; a connection tone marks the beginning of use. A store chime places the sound within a visit. A composed signature can connect those encounters with the brand, while the surrounding experience gives the audience reasons to associate it with something particular.

The business can design that audible character and decide how it is used. The audience brings its own history and attention to each encounter. Emotional connection develops within that relationship; it isn't an outcome the composition can prescribe.

Before asking for a sound people will remember, listen to the experience they will remember with it. That gives sonic branding a more substantial brief. It also helps the business distinguish a part that needs attention from one that already deserves to be kept.