Raising the sound bar: the new power of sonic branding

“Everything began in my life with The Beatles.” says Michele Arnese. “I was smaller than my parents’ hi-fi, so I couldn’t see what record was on,” he remembers. “So I put the needle on the record, and it was the Beatles, and I learnt all the lyrics, all the music and learnt how to play the guitar with all those songs. It is still my favourite music.”

Arnese is the cofounder of amp, the pioneers who specialise in what a brand sounds like, whether that’s the Mastercard transactions you can hear happening all over the world or a single sonic brand identity binding 16 countries and a 60,000-strong workforce. 

The concept of a sonic identity in the 21st century goes way beyond a jingle in an ad.

Before founding amp in 2009, he’d studied music – piano, clarinet, guitar – and information technology, as well as early AI systems. All of this enabled him to innovate new approaches to sound, tech, AI and the concept of a sonic identity in the 21st century that goes way beyond a jingle in an ad.

“The idea was to create an agency that specialised not just in music production but in identities. By talking to the brands and consulting with them," explains Arnese, "we can create their own musical expression that’s unique to them.” 

Above: amp designed the textured sound for Bryan Buckley's exuberant campaign for Avocados From Mexico. 

It took several years for clients to fully get on board. Now there’s a queue round the block. “No one talked about how sound can be used in a strategic way beyond a campaign soundtrack,” recalls Arnese. “We went through educating to making sonic branding part of the hygiene work you have to do on brand identity.”

A sonic logo in the last three seconds of an ad – think Intel – was important but now, who's getting to the last three seconds? It’s more important what you do in the first five seconds.

amp is sonic ambassador for brands including Deloitte, BMW, Porsche, Triumph, Mercedes and Mastercard, but its first big job was for Linde Group, kingpin of the industrial gases industry, whose global head, helpfully, had been a violinist in another life. “When we presented the idea for a sonic identity, I expected so many questions, but she just said, ‘this is exactly what we need!’ This told me it could really be a business – we were creating a value for the brand, something that didn’t exist before. They were transitioning from a muted brand to one with a sound.”

We think about music as a liquid, and music as a sonic identity should be flexible, to go everywhere where you listen to the brand.

amp appeared at a time when the decline of linear TV meant a growing need for creating digital audio and visual content quickly and across multiple platforms. “A sonic logo in the last three seconds of an ad – think Intel – was important,” says Arnese, “but now, who is getting to the last three seconds of an ad?! It’s more important what you do in the first five seconds.

“We think about music as a liquid, and music as a sonic identity should be flexible, to go everywhere where you listen to the brand.” So that when a brand comes to amp, sound becomes the medium in which the brand swims. “Exactly! I like this idea. Can I steal it?!” 

Arnese warms to his theme. “You have screenless communications from brands, audio-only deployment, Spotify advertising, podcasts, marketing and branded content in different channels – you have so many scenarios where the brand swims in to the sound.”

Above: The 007 audio experience doesn't just rely one just one theme tune but a system of sounds. 

Since 2009, amp has developed a range of tests and procedures, combining human ears with an AI assist, that guide the journey of a brand to full sonic identity. “First we have a phase called Brand Analysis. We create sonic principles. You have to set up guardrails to understand what ‘on-brand’ sounds like and what it sounds like to be ‘off-brand’ – which can be equally important. 

We use an AI tool in the initial stages called Sonic Radar, which goes through all the brand’s content over the past 12 months, analysing hundreds of videos and building up a chart so you can see which tonalities to use. This is the ignition of the sonic branding project.”

We use James Bond as a successful example of sonic DNA.

amp then sets about coding the client brand’s ‘sonic DNA’. “We use James Bond as a successful example of sonic DNA,” says Arnese. “It doesn’t rely only on one jingle, it relies on a system of ingredients, and whenever you create the new, you cook with these ingredients. Maybe you leave some out and take some others, so you are creatively flexible, but you create a thread that makes the brand recognisable.”

The same principles apply when it comes to brand voice, and voice-over, using AI to scale it to a global reach while retaining a local emphasis. “If we dub a brand voice into different languages, it helps to understand what a confident voice sounds like in that language. You start from the same branded point of view, which is globally consistent but locally effective, and you deploy at scale. That’s what brands want now. A global consistency but with a locally effective presence. We’re stepping back from a brand that commands everything globally to brands asking, ‘how can we make sure that our brand is translated coherently into different cultures?’.”

amp created the ambient ocean sounds of The Rock, Zanzibar (above, left) one of three restaurants recreated in New York's Spring Studios (above, right), as part of Mastercard's campaign PRICELESS: an International Culinary Collective.

Having mapped out a brand’s sonic DNA, it’s time to put some checks into place. “When you put the sonic principles of a brand into the ‘sonic check’, you can upload a creative option and it will tell you if that is on or off brand,” explains Arnese. “It can predict how consumers will answer if you present them a sound option.”

At amp, they use AI and data analysis to examine and interrogate the past, but it is human creative evaluation that looks to a brand’s future. Where AI takes a more dynamic role in the process is in what Arnese calls the 'sonic space'. “This tool creates music at scale,” he says. “But the key thing is that it learns from the brand itself, because the brand has a sonic DNA, and it’s one of the very few AI tools able to create music at scale that doesn’t depend on training material from third-party copyrights. This is a huge issue,” he adds. 

amp’s closed training set, trained on the brand alone, and nothing else, is in part why it has earned the trust – and the ongoing business – of brands like Mastercard, for whom they have created a complete suite of sounds. “Whenever you pay with a Mastercard at any of the 500,000 points of sale worldwide, or when you listen to a Mastercard campaign, our work is there. We create out of what we [have already created] initially over and over again.”

Sound can let us feel a space, and this is something you don’t think about because it goes into your subconscious.

Indeed, Arnese ranks amp’s work with Mastercard as his favourite of all. “They built a clone of a Zanzibar beach restaurant in New York City. And what we did is that we went to Zanzibar and recorded the sound around the restaurant for hours, and then put this sound into the clone in New York and all of a sudden you could feel it, hear the people on the beach singing some African song, the children, the special birds, the wind, and everything. All of a sudden this plastic world became real.”

He compares that job to amp’s recent forays into sound and augmented reality. “Sound can let us feel a space, and this is something you don’t think about because it enters your subconscious,” he says. “And with AR, it is so important because sound can deliver exactly that gift of perspective, making everything real.” To the point, perhaps, where it could approach the ‘feelies’ of Aldous Huxley’s 20th century sci-fi masterpiece, Brave New World [movies that the audience can smell and taste] “We are now working with brands on a multi-sensorial space,” says Arnese, “pairing sound with taste, with smell, with visuals. It’s not just the sum of everything, it’s a multiplication of everything.”