Euphony is the soul of the brand
Why brands without an acoustic identity are only half personalities
Why brands without an acoustic identity are only half personalitiesBy Ernst WeberSing what you can't say: Brand melos, or brand acoustics, convey the basic sentiment of a brand through acoustic stimuli. Although Swiss advertising has recognized the potential influence of the auditory component, it is far from being a virtuoso master of this underestimated discipline.
Auditory signs do not flatter the eye like advertising photography, nor the mind like written advertising copy, but they create and shape the feeling that the consumer has towards a brand. Music and sound are just as established tools of advertising as the written word, still and moving images: Over 90 percent of television and cinema films contain music; radio advertising can only be perceived by ear; and acoustic stimuli are also used in telephone queues, on the Internet and at the POS.
"Of all media, music has the most diverse, lasting and profound emotional impact. It is therefore regarded by the advertising industry as an important emotional means of communication...", is how Berlin composer Klaus Wüsthoff describes the role of sound in advertising.
In the music the
Passions with yourself
It is in the nature of sound, both natural and artificially produced, that it consists 100 percent of communicative power. Sounds are communicative in themselves, they want to be heard and interpreted: We reflexively associate the squeal of tires with danger, for example. Sounds that we cannot identify arouse our curiosity or worry us.
Regardless of the content of a statement, we infer the mental state of a person speaking from the sound of a voice. A composition does not only give us information about the harmonic need that guided the composer. We are able to emotionally decipher the communicative energy of a melody without any intellectual effort: The sound of a piece of music puts the listener in a different emotional state.
The language of music is universally understandable. "In music," says Nietzsche, "the passions dance with themselves." It is the world language par excellence, which can communicate with all skin colors in a thousand timbres and which cannot be contained in its effectiveness by linguistic, spiritual or religious boundaries. Music transcends the highest spirit and goes deeper than the most intimate contemplation.
The auditory component
only plays third fiddle
It goes without saying that communication utilizes this powerful effect of the auditory. On the other hand, it is very surprising that it is degraded to the inferior subordinate of words and images as the supreme medium for evoking and conveying emotions. The use of music, vocals, the spoken word, sounds and noises is generally left largely to chance, as often not enough time and money is made available for the development of an advertising film score.
Billy Wirz, for example, owner of Crazy Tunes Soundstudio, is used to the fact that the music is only commissioned at the end of the whole process. "Having a week is already half an eternity. Usually there are two or three days left," says the sound master from Stäfa.
Compared to the written word and images, the use of audio is often under-reflected and is favored by various circumstances: The ADC, for example, recognizes groundbreaking advertising every year, but refrains from explicitly including advertising film music in the assessment.
The budget for music is often cut in the wrong place
The promotion of creative implementation that he strives for therefore only extends to the rational and visual area. Strategists, CDs, copywriters, ADs and graphic designers devote all their knowledge, skills and a lot of work to the verbal and visual extraction of a communication core, but they are hardly ever assisted by someone who is equally capable of the auditory representation of this core through appropriate training.
This probably has to do with the fact that music is a subject that practically everyone knows a little about, but almost no one really knows. Besides, you can't discuss sounds like you can technical details. Music is less tangible than a picture cut. You either like it or you dislike it.
The acoustic component of communication is already neglected in education. In the curricula of communication schools, creative schools and design schools, the topic of sound design only appears in passing. Furthermore, the subordinate role played by brand acoustics is evident from the fact that although there are numerous graphic design associations, there are no interest groups to promote awareness of communication sound design or the equality of sound in communication.
Advertising research, which has only been intensively studying music since the mid-1970s, does not offer any help either. Relatively few empirical studies have produced contradictory results. Haley, Richardson and Baldwin, for example, found in 1984 that a change in the recipient's attitude as a result of the music obviously depends decisively on whether it supports the message in terms of content and form; Aakar and Bruzzone proved in 1985 that advertising is perceived as less disturbing if it is based on familiar music. In 1986 and 1989, Alpert and Alpert came to the conclusion that happy music creates happier moods, but sad music creates higher purchase intentions. However, other surveys prove the opposite. "It's not uncommon to simply add a 'muesli' tune that a client personally likes, even if the tune is not necessarily the right application for the theme of the commercial," says Renzo Selmi, owner of the Zurich recording studio of the same name.
In addition, the budget calculated for the composition of a tune usually varies between a modest 2500 and 7500 francs. Amounts of this magnitude are not enough to arrange and orchestrate a track and record it with good musicians. That's why a lot of music is produced electronically in the studio on a synthesizer or in the conventional way: with a little bass, piano, guitar and drums.
It's the TV placements that put the butter on the bread. The fee paid by Suisa to the creator of an advertising film score is just under three percent of the advertising budget. Insiders know: As a result of Suisa's control, music has lost the luster of an interesting Swiss franc item that used to allow the agency or film producer to pocket a few extra percent through so-called buyouts. Today, if you estimated the music at CHF 50,000 for a film budget of CHF 400,000, everyone would wave goodbye. It would be better to hire another cameraman for this money, cast more expensive actors in the roles and commission the catering company to serve luxury sandwiches on the set.
The brand logo should be part of the corporate identity
Only in rare exceptional cases is the auditory component of communication strategically integrated into communication in the sense of a constant brand predicate. The necessity of equalizing the three components can already be seen in some of the terms used by marketing and borrowed from anthropological terminology, such as brand personality or product identity.
It is only possible to speak of a brand personality or brand identity if one first assumes a brand soul in which the characteristics of a brand are predisposed. The brand soul is the source from which the brand ego and product identity are constituted. In other words: the word represents the brand spirit, the image and layout the brand body, but the audio represents the soul of a brand: its emotional identity.
Only a poor ear for acoustic corporate identities
Although music is an integral part of communication, it cannot be overlooked that there is little awareness of brand-immanent and overall corporate sound cultures. This is in stark contrast to the USA, for example, where sound designers are often brought in as early as the conception phase.
It practically never happens that an acoustic corporate identity (ACI) or a corporate sound design is developed in parallel to the corporate design. While the visual design of large companies' communications often has to adhere to a design manual, there is only rarely an equivalent in the auditory field.
In terms of acoustic-sound presence, Swiss communication is only just beginning to play around on the keyboard of acoustic identity. Only a few specialists are striving for a basic acoustic determination of the value of a brand, for a binding company-identical acoustic idiom.
Multi-layered communication that has an overall harmonious connection is only encountered in exceptional cases. Hardly any company really pushes the auditory component with strategic consistency.
"In terms of acoustics, we are now where corporate design was in the sixties: at the beginning," says Peter Weiss, owner
of the Basel agency Corporate Sound.
A tendency towards melos is most noticeable in the advertising of some individual brands. From the early 1980s to 1998, for example, Néscafe gave itself a coherent musical identity with the South American folk song "La Collegiala", which was rich in tasteful romanticism. The song accomplished more than a proof of origin. It had earth beneath the notes, awakening the melancholy of the connoisseur who, with every sip of coffee he drank, unconsciously looked over the edge of the cup at the social contrasts surrounding this product.
In 1999, Dutch musician Ilja Gort passed on this brand melody to a new tune that still expresses the brand spirit in cinema advertising today. In a more recent TV product spot, however, the melody is largely fleeting. It merely lives on in a jingle that plays at the beginning and end of the film. In place of the melody, younger, fresher music sings the character of the product.
Orange may not be an ACI, but the mobile communications provider consistently uses its music in harmony with the values that the brand represents. "Everyone wants a catchy tune," say Billy Wirz and Renzo Selmi in unison. But he often wriggles out of the brand responsibility.
With regard to brand melos, musical logos and acoustic logos such as those of Migros and Swisscom are only relevant if they summarize the brand essence in a few tones within the framework of an acoustic identity, just as the slogan formulates the basic idea of a communication in a catchy way on the rational level and the key visual captures a primary communicative moment on the visual level.
Signet-like acoustic signs are perceived less emotionally and more through the mind. This also applies to indelible jingles, for example "Meister Proper cleans so clean that you can see yourself reflected in it", and to illustrative musical implementations such as a theatrical staging of Ravel's "Bolero" in a current alcohol prevention commercial.
On the soundtracks of the
Brand emotions
Peter Weiss understands corporate sound as "the intelligent and dynamic soundtrack of a company", which is not limited to the obvious, namely TV and radio commercials and the telephone, but considers all the ways in which a company makes an auditory appearance as part of an overall strategy.
To establish an acoustic identity, the Basel violinist and former sound engineer at Radio DRS 2 analyzes the values and nature of a company, examines whether an already established sound culture or existing sound patterns can be adopted and, if this is not the case, formulates a differentiation strategy.
For the Basel-based sound designer, an acoustic identity does not consist of "music that you cram in everywhere", but is made up of acoustic patterns that are applied to the visual world like typographic features or color codes. It is the opposite of a collection of auditory events without an overall concept.
In the words of Theodor W. Adorno, acoustic identity consists of a "harmonic perspective that draws all melodic events into itself. The dynamic conception of tonality as a whole gives the chord" - the auditory measures - "its specific weight." The acoustic mark should be a "psychological category", "a matter of inspiration", not "a moment of a dialectical process that takes place in the musical form".
The brand reveals its essence through its acoustic identity
A new acoustic logo designed by Weiss for Coop, for example, represents the main value of joie de vivre as well as the secondary values of freshness, health, convenience and dynamism. The communication of these secondary values required a transparent sound image, and transparent sounds such as
the vibraphone, the Fender Rhodes piano and bell tones.
The main value of joie de vivre, however, is realized through the musical style of jazz and a four-part minimalist melody, which is reminiscent of Miles Davis in its almost cheeky manner. This works as a very short acoustic logo as well as a longer theme. The big band style of music that Coop had previously used had been adopted insofar as jazz had been retained. There is no pop, rock or reggae version of this rough identity, says the Basel sound designer. As a further identity element, he mentions a bass line that is so distinctive that it can be played independently over time.
"Although we stay in jazz, we can cover a wide field by working with new jazz, London jazz, soft jazz and maybe even a modern big band jazz interpretation," says Peter Weiss.
The relationship between local communication and sound is characterized by an arbitrariness that runs counter to its advertising meaning and is dissonant with the frequency with which communication uses the medium of sound. The fact that acoustics play third fiddle or even fall into the orchestra pit is ultimately also due to the fact that the Swiss are not particularly emotional people by mentality.
It is possible that an annual award for the best Swiss advertising film music could turn the score sheet in favor of the deeper attention that communication pays to brand melodies.
Or to quote Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music, life would be a mistake."
Auditory signs do not flatter the eye like advertising photography, nor the mind like written advertising copy, but they create and shape the feeling that the consumer has towards a brand. Music and sound are just as established tools of advertising as the written word, still and moving images: Over 90 percent of television and cinema films contain music; radio advertising can only be perceived by ear; and acoustic stimuli are also used in telephone queues, on the Internet and at the POS.
"Of all media, music has the most diverse, lasting and profound emotional impact. It is therefore regarded by the advertising industry as an important emotional means of communication...", is how Berlin composer Klaus Wüsthoff describes the role of sound in advertising.
In the music the
Passions with yourself
It is in the nature of sound, both natural and artificially produced, that it consists 100 percent of communicative power. Sounds are communicative in themselves, they want to be heard and interpreted: We reflexively associate the squeal of tires with danger, for example. Sounds that we cannot identify arouse our curiosity or worry us.
Regardless of the content of a statement, we infer the mental state of a person speaking from the sound of a voice. A composition does not only give us information about the harmonic need that guided the composer. We are able to emotionally decipher the communicative energy of a melody without any intellectual effort: The sound of a piece of music puts the listener in a different emotional state.
The language of music is universally understandable. "In music," says Nietzsche, "the passions dance with themselves." It is the world language par excellence, which can communicate with all skin colors in a thousand timbres and which cannot be contained in its effectiveness by linguistic, spiritual or religious boundaries. Music transcends the highest spirit and goes deeper than the most intimate contemplation.
The auditory component
only plays third fiddle
It goes without saying that communication utilizes this powerful effect of the auditory. On the other hand, it is very surprising that it is degraded to the inferior subordinate of words and images as the supreme medium for evoking and conveying emotions. The use of music, vocals, the spoken word, sounds and noises is generally left largely to chance, as often not enough time and money is made available for the development of an advertising film score.
Billy Wirz, for example, owner of Crazy Tunes Soundstudio, is used to the fact that the music is only commissioned at the end of the whole process. "Having a week is already half an eternity. Usually there are two or three days left," says the sound master from Stäfa.
Compared to the written word and images, the use of audio is often under-reflected and is favored by various circumstances: The ADC, for example, recognizes groundbreaking advertising every year, but refrains from explicitly including advertising film music in the assessment.
The budget for music is often cut in the wrong place
The promotion of creative implementation that he strives for therefore only extends to the rational and visual area. Strategists, CDs, copywriters, ADs and graphic designers devote all their knowledge, skills and a lot of work to the verbal and visual extraction of a communication core, but they are hardly ever assisted by someone who is equally capable of the auditory representation of this core through appropriate training.
This probably has to do with the fact that music is a subject that practically everyone knows a little about, but almost no one really knows. Besides, you can't discuss sounds like you can technical details. Music is less tangible than a picture cut. You either like it or you dislike it.
The acoustic component of communication is already neglected in education. In the curricula of communication schools, creative schools and design schools, the topic of sound design only appears in passing. Furthermore, the subordinate role played by brand acoustics is evident from the fact that although there are numerous graphic design associations, there are no interest groups to promote awareness of communication sound design or the equality of sound in communication.
Advertising research, which has only been intensively studying music since the mid-1970s, does not offer any help either. Relatively few empirical studies have produced contradictory results. Haley, Richardson and Baldwin, for example, found in 1984 that a change in the recipient's attitude as a result of the music obviously depends decisively on whether it supports the message in terms of content and form; Aakar and Bruzzone proved in 1985 that advertising is perceived as less disturbing if it is based on familiar music. In 1986 and 1989, Alpert and Alpert came to the conclusion that happy music creates happier moods, but sad music creates higher purchase intentions. However, other surveys prove the opposite. "It's not uncommon to simply add a 'muesli' tune that a client personally likes, even if the tune is not necessarily the right application for the theme of the commercial," says Renzo Selmi, owner of the Zurich recording studio of the same name.
In addition, the budget calculated for the composition of a tune usually varies between a modest 2500 and 7500 francs. Amounts of this magnitude are not enough to arrange and orchestrate a track and record it with good musicians. That's why a lot of music is produced electronically in the studio on a synthesizer or in the conventional way: with a little bass, piano, guitar and drums.
It's the TV placements that put the butter on the bread. The fee paid by Suisa to the creator of an advertising film score is just under three percent of the advertising budget. Insiders know: As a result of Suisa's control, music has lost the luster of an interesting Swiss franc item that used to allow the agency or film producer to pocket a few extra percent through so-called buyouts. Today, if you estimated the music at CHF 50,000 for a film budget of CHF 400,000, everyone would wave goodbye. It would be better to hire another cameraman for this money, cast more expensive actors in the roles and commission the catering company to serve luxury sandwiches on the set.
The brand logo should be part of the corporate identity
Only in rare exceptional cases is the auditory component of communication strategically integrated into communication in the sense of a constant brand predicate. The necessity of equalizing the three components can already be seen in some of the terms used by marketing and borrowed from anthropological terminology, such as brand personality or product identity.
It is only possible to speak of a brand personality or brand identity if one first assumes a brand soul in which the characteristics of a brand are predisposed. The brand soul is the source from which the brand ego and product identity are constituted. In other words: the word represents the brand spirit, the image and layout the brand body, but the audio represents the soul of a brand: its emotional identity.
Only a poor ear for acoustic corporate identities
Although music is an integral part of communication, it cannot be overlooked that there is little awareness of brand-immanent and overall corporate sound cultures. This is in stark contrast to the USA, for example, where sound designers are often brought in as early as the conception phase.
It practically never happens that an acoustic corporate identity (ACI) or a corporate sound design is developed in parallel to the corporate design. While the visual design of large companies' communications often has to adhere to a design manual, there is only rarely an equivalent in the auditory field.
In terms of acoustic-sound presence, Swiss communication is only just beginning to play around on the keyboard of acoustic identity. Only a few specialists are striving for a basic acoustic determination of the value of a brand, for a binding company-identical acoustic idiom.
Multi-layered communication that has an overall harmonious connection is only encountered in exceptional cases. Hardly any company really pushes the auditory component with strategic consistency.
"In terms of acoustics, we are now where corporate design was in the sixties: at the beginning," says Peter Weiss, owner
of the Basel agency Corporate Sound.
A tendency towards melos is most noticeable in the advertising of some individual brands. From the early 1980s to 1998, for example, Néscafe gave itself a coherent musical identity with the South American folk song "La Collegiala", which was rich in tasteful romanticism. The song accomplished more than a proof of origin. It had earth beneath the notes, awakening the melancholy of the connoisseur who, with every sip of coffee he drank, unconsciously looked over the edge of the cup at the social contrasts surrounding this product.
In 1999, Dutch musician Ilja Gort passed on this brand melody to a new tune that still expresses the brand spirit in cinema advertising today. In a more recent TV product spot, however, the melody is largely fleeting. It merely lives on in a jingle that plays at the beginning and end of the film. In place of the melody, younger, fresher music sings the character of the product.
Orange may not be an ACI, but the mobile communications provider consistently uses its music in harmony with the values that the brand represents. "Everyone wants a catchy tune," say Billy Wirz and Renzo Selmi in unison. But he often wriggles out of the brand responsibility.
With regard to brand melos, musical logos and acoustic logos such as those of Migros and Swisscom are only relevant if they summarize the brand essence in a few tones within the framework of an acoustic identity, just as the slogan formulates the basic idea of a communication in a catchy way on the rational level and the key visual captures a primary communicative moment on the visual level.
Signet-like acoustic signs are perceived less emotionally and more through the mind. This also applies to indelible jingles, for example "Meister Proper cleans so clean that you can see yourself reflected in it", and to illustrative musical implementations such as a theatrical staging of Ravel's "Bolero" in a current alcohol prevention commercial.
On the soundtracks of the
Brand emotions
Peter Weiss understands corporate sound as "the intelligent and dynamic soundtrack of a company", which is not limited to the obvious, namely TV and radio commercials and the telephone, but considers all the ways in which a company makes an auditory appearance as part of an overall strategy.
To establish an acoustic identity, the Basel violinist and former sound engineer at Radio DRS 2 analyzes the values and nature of a company, examines whether an already established sound culture or existing sound patterns can be adopted and, if this is not the case, formulates a differentiation strategy.
For the Basel-based sound designer, an acoustic identity does not consist of "music that you cram in everywhere", but is made up of acoustic patterns that are applied to the visual world like typographic features or color codes. It is the opposite of a collection of auditory events without an overall concept.
In the words of Theodor W. Adorno, acoustic identity consists of a "harmonic perspective that draws all melodic events into itself. The dynamic conception of tonality as a whole gives the chord" - the auditory measures - "its specific weight." The acoustic mark should be a "psychological category", "a matter of inspiration", not "a moment of a dialectical process that takes place in the musical form".
The brand reveals its essence through its acoustic identity
A new acoustic logo designed by Weiss for Coop, for example, represents the main value of joie de vivre as well as the secondary values of freshness, health, convenience and dynamism. The communication of these secondary values required a transparent sound image, and transparent sounds such as
the vibraphone, the Fender Rhodes piano and bell tones.
The main value of joie de vivre, however, is realized through the musical style of jazz and a four-part minimalist melody, which is reminiscent of Miles Davis in its almost cheeky manner. This works as a very short acoustic logo as well as a longer theme. The big band style of music that Coop had previously used had been adopted insofar as jazz had been retained. There is no pop, rock or reggae version of this rough identity, says the Basel sound designer. As a further identity element, he mentions a bass line that is so distinctive that it can be played independently over time.
"Although we stay in jazz, we can cover a wide field by working with new jazz, London jazz, soft jazz and maybe even a modern big band jazz interpretation," says Peter Weiss.
The relationship between local communication and sound is characterized by an arbitrariness that runs counter to its advertising meaning and is dissonant with the frequency with which communication uses the medium of sound. The fact that acoustics play third fiddle or even fall into the orchestra pit is ultimately also due to the fact that the Swiss are not particularly emotional people by mentality.
It is possible that an annual award for the best Swiss advertising film music could turn the score sheet in favor of the deeper attention that communication pays to brand melodies.
Or to quote Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music, life would be a mistake."
