Building Great Sonic Brands in 2026: Part 2
So, you want to create a sonic brand?
In part one of this series, we talked through different trends and approaches to sound in 2026. With a little help from David Courtier-Dutton at SoundOut, a leader in sonic branding testing, we surveyed the state of the industry, and unpacked the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.
But how do you actually build a sonic brand? In part two, we’ll outline some best practices and tips for sonic branding success.
Start With Strategy
There are usually many viable roads to a destination. Often picking the best one is a process of carefully weighing the pros and cons of each, and making an informed decision about which approach suits you best. But here’s the thing–you can’t make any decisions unless you first know where you are trying to go!
This is why strategy is so crucial for sonic branding. Before a single sound is composed, a good sonic branding partner will work with you to help you define what you are trying to achieve, and build consensus around key criteria that will be used to evaluate the work. This means researching competitors and the wider landscape, holding collaborative discussion with key team members, and defining what a sound should say about a brand. While sound will always be partially subjective, the strategy process should help build a quasi-objective framework that serves as the foundation for sonic creativity. Strategy also allows a sonic agency and a client to build a shared vocabulary.
Crucially, a great sonic branding agency will never ask you to play the role of music and sound expert; you are the expert on what your brand needs to express, and they are the experts on how to bring that to life with sound.
Take Some Risks
Nobody sets out to make boring creative–it’s a contradiction of terms! But it does happen, and more often than not, the reason is because many brands are reluctant to take a risk.
It’s totally understandable why this happens. Many brands have large, diverse and multifarious audiences, with different needs and tastes. This is a particular issue for larger brands with many different offerings. It can seem tempting to create something neutral that will appeal to everyone everywhere. However, there is an inverse relationship between how broadly appealing a sonic can be, and how impactful it can be. Of course, the sonic should not be actively unpleasant or offensive, but in trying to please everyone you risk doing something that appeals to noone and fades into the background.
The Arby’s sonic is one of the highest performing sonics in-market right now, according to the sonic branding researchers SoundOut. Do you think they were worried about offending anyone when they made this?
Of course, the right balance of broadness versus specificity will vary per brand, and will correlate with the overall tone a brand is trying to set. Ultimately, the most important thing is to decide what you are trying to convey, and lean in. Which brings me to my next point…
Simplify and Clarify
What is the ONE most important thing you want people to associate with your brand? Not the top five, or even the top three, but the one most important thing?
Sometimes in design, there is a temptation to do everything at once. We create multilayered assets jam packed with meaning. This layer represents our amazing customer service, and this sound design cue is a nod to our physical product, and this melody on top represents the feeling we create when we solve our customers problems…. And so on.
Here’s the problem: in music and sound design, more is not always more; in fact, more is usually less. The more complex and layered a sound is, the harder it becomes for any one element to rise to the top and break through, and the sound can devolve into sonic soup. The problem gets worse under the pressures of real world use cases, where brands have incredibly short time windows to get their message across and steep competition for people’s attention.
One of my all time favorite sonics is the Nintendo Switch Snap. It’s a super simple and clear idea that says a lot with a little. It speaks to the most unique aspect of the product–its ability to transform from a TV console to handheld with the snap of a controller–with no fluff or frills. Just one simple, tactile impact, which is so succinct that it slots in at the top of advertisements with no trouble at all.
This kind of simplicity often engenders skepticism, like the museumgoer who says “My kid could have done that” about an abstract painting. But like abstraction, simplicity often requires more thoughtfulness, not less. Often, it requires an iterative process of putting everything on the table, and then stripping it all back until only the most essential elements remain, like unearthing a statue from a block of marble.
Use It Or Lose It
For ages, philosophers have pondered: if a sonic plays in the woods, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
For our purposes, the answer is basically no, not really.
You can design the most beautiful sonic ever made, you can perfectly capture the essence of your brand in a beautiful little diamond of sound. But if you aren’t investing in it, if you aren’t making space for it, if you aren’t doing the work to make sure it gets heard by your audience, then you won’t reap the benefits.
This may seem like a basic point, but this is one of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen with sonic branding over the years. Ultimately, the sonic is just one of many competing priorities for brands. With everything from the edit of a big campaign, to the flow of a user experience, there will always be tradeoffs, different stakeholders pushing different objectives, and competition for precious moments of time. This is especially true of the age-old conflict between the needs of an overall brand and the desire to make the most iconic ad possible–lord knows that ad agencies love to license a big hit, which has a way of crowding out the sonic. Only you can decide what to prioritize, but know that if you want your sonic to truly be effective, you will have to prioritize it.
“Exposure is the oxygen a sonic asset needs to thrive.” says David. “It must be carpet bombed onto consumers at every conceivable opportunity to become a Distinctive Brand Asset (DBA).”
This is shown in sonic effectiveness research. Companies that test sonic brands will always be careful to compare sonic brands that are not in-market yet with sonics that the test participants are not familiar with. Why? Because the mere exposure to a sonic has a massive effect on audience affinity. This is a common trend among all the top performing sonic brands; they all have invested heavily to build equity in their sounds.
Of course, familiarity by itself is only half the battle; The sonic must feel truly ownable and deeply associated with the brand. David Courtier-Dutton explains: “Familiarity alone is a relatively shallow memory process. Without deep associative links, it leads to high claimed recognition but low actual attribution. With sustained investment and frequent repetition, however, a profound shift occurs: the sonic logo gradually loses its own intrinsic personality and transforms into a powerful, direct emotional conduit for the brand personality itself.”
Go Forth And Make Sound
We could go on and on, but that’s plenty to chew on for anyone aspiring to build a sonic brand. If you made it to the end of this article, you are now ahead of the sonic curve.
The only thing left to do is to get started!
