Audrey Arbeeny: Branding with Sound

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. Our team is on a mission to make you remarkable.
Helping us today is Audrey Arbeeny.
She is the pioneer in the field of Sonic Branding.
She has been the music supervisor for NBC's coverage for the last seven or so Olympic games. In fact, she's won two Emmy's for her work with NBC.
She has also created the familiar sounds that people hear when they are customers of Google, Microsoft Whirlpool, KitchenAid, and McDonald's.
Audrey is the executive producer and creative director for Audiobrain.
She also teaches at New York's Pratt Institute, along with the Fashion Institute of technology. Her course on Sonic Branding at the Pratt Institute was the first of its kind in the US.
One of Audrey's current projects involves studying the effects of sound on patient, staff, and families in intensive care units.
She attended New York University and was elected to the board of governors of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences New York chapter in 2015.
This episode is about using sound as a marketing tool to enhance your brand recognition and awareness.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People, and now, here is the remarkable Audrey Arbeeny.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Sonic Branding is the art and science of creating a strategic and consistent audio system, music, sound, voice, and vibration for a brand, and then leveraging it to all of the relevant touchpoints for a unified communication and a better customer experience.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, I understand the art part. What's the science of sonic branding.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Science of sonic branding is you have psychoacoustics, you have biomusicology.
People respond physically to sound. People respond psychologically to sound. We are wired for sound. We are wired to be receptors of sound, and we do a lot of science research around those sounds that we create.
We used to involve the clients in that. Now, we present it to them because it's pretty heady when we want to make sure that there's that emotional feeling. When you can create that emotional feeling, that would be in your psychoacoustics.
So there is a science to it. There is a methodology to it. There's branding to it. There's creative to it. There's strategy to it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Does it touch all points? Let's take a car example. Let's say you're doing sonic branding for a car. Does it start with the noise that it makes when you sit inside the bings and the pings, and then you start the engine and then your console is coming alive.
Is it every single sound is planned?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Usually, yes, because what we do is we do a discovery and a research phase.
So we want to make sure that we understand the brand, where the brand is going, what the brand stands for. So if it's a bank and they're secure, we don't care about that. That's table stakes. You should be secure for your bank, but what we do is we do a tremendous amount of research.
Sometimes there are sounds that are inherently built that are in the car.
You can't control certain sounds, but you can control a tremendous amount of them.
From there, we'd have a sound logo that is consistent. So what we do is we create a framework. We do concepts. We create a sonic filter.
Think of it like a blueprint, like a foundation of a house. By the time we start writing, we know what that brand, the portfolio of sound is going to be like.
When we do a product sonification, we usually do all of the sounds, and we make sure that they're consistent, and we have to understand what environment they're going in, what frequency they're going to be at, what type of files they're going to be.
How many times are they going to be heard? Is it a sound that's going to be heard once? Is it a sound that's going to be heard a thousand times? These are all considerations that we would do with sounds, say in a car.
Guy Kawasaki:
Walk me through the process. So are you typically meeting with a CMO or a product manager or the CEO? I mean, how do you get this data to formulate the sound? Is it just like being an ad agency or you're a sound agency?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Oh, we are not an ad agency. We're sonic branding specialists.
So think of it as having a pair of custom shoes made for yourself. This won't go for any other brand.
What we do, the jobs come in from the CMO, the CEO, the designer, the lead designer, and a lead product designer. It comes in from corporate. It comes in from a lot of different places, but at the end of the day, we sit down together.
They give us the mission statement. They give us the style guide because if you are doing a visual identity, your fonts wouldn't all be different, and your colors wouldn't all be different, your photography wouldn't all be different.
It would have an aesthetic to it, and that's what we're creating.
We work with the team to find out what they stand for, and we look at all the competitors to make sure that we're not creating something that's maybe authentic for them, but is very similar in sound to what someone else is doing.
So we look at all of that as well, and we understand the objectives and where it's going to go now and where it's going to go in the future. So we'll start with whatever touchpoint. Once we have that information, we create Sonic mood board. We create creative concepts, and we come up with a framework for the sound.
We use sound that we develop, which resonates with them, and is the foundational sound. From there, we could create a sound logo, product sounds.
We could create different styles for a child, for a heartfelt and emotional, for a party and energetic, for virtual reality, for a chat bot, voice branding, but the main filter is already set.
So all of these things will sound like they belong to this brand. They won't be out and one-off. We'll do this event. We'll do this product.
We had a client that had four of the same product in this one line and they all sounded different. So why should there be four shutdown sounds? That makes no sense. It's their closing sound.
When we did Whirlpool and KitchenAid, it got major writeups because Whirlpool was the caregiver, KitchenAid was the maker. They sound different because they represent different characteristics.
And yet, there are parts within it that are maybe as similar gesture here and there because they are all part of the same brand, Whirlpool.
So it got big writeups. It got The Atlantic. It got Wall Street Journal. It got the Times UK, and we spoke at CES because people realized how much better this experience was.
When you do something that's authentic and researched and the team can have input, and even if it's as simple as when we do our sound mood board, which we create many different ways to say the same characteristic, and they'll tell us, "We think that one is just too harsh for us. We think that one is too young for us," and then we go into the next characteristic, health first or something like that.
They'll say, "I don't really hear health in that," and they'll say, "I really like that ascending guitar. It's really positive and it's organic." We take all this information and that's where the science part comes in, where we balance these things out, and that's when we write concepts for them.
They usually pick one or two concepts and we start to roll out our creative, but it's researched, it's tested.
We have a methodology that works. We have 100 percent return rate.
We've done everything from the Xbox 360 to tomorrow start my eleventh music supervision for NBC Olympics broadcast. We do all Hall in America cruise line experience except the shows, and it's a consistent feel. It's a vibe.
So that's what we do, and then we test if the client wants testing.
Nowadays, pretty much a lot of them do, and then we start to write our creative, but by the time we write our creative, we know what direction we're going in.
Guy Kawasaki:
What's an example of a creative? What does that creative document say? Just give me an example. You do one for a football team. What does it say in that document?
Audrey Arbeeny:
It's not a document because it's more alive than that because they have to hear it. So we do write it out as a document, but they would hear it, and it would say ... We would have the notation. It would have how we got to the characteristics that we landed on, what we did, what we researched, who we researched, and what each thing represents.
So if we're doing something like when we did Panadol, let's say, Panadol was about washing away my pain. We heard that a lot in the interviews.
So the water rush and the sounds represent that characteristic. So there's nothing that we write that doesn't validate back to that sonic filter that we created.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say that two NFL football teams come to you. First of all, can you have two NFL clients?
Audrey Arbeeny:
I think so.
Guy Kawasaki:
So let's say, I don't know, the Chiefs and the Rams come to you. Aren't they both basically going to say, "We want hard hitting impact. Exciting, dramatic sounds"? How do you create-
Audrey Arbeeny:
No.
Guy Kawasaki:
What do they say?
Audrey Arbeeny:
When we did the New York Giants, the New York Giants sound very different than the Patriots. The Patriots sound very different than the Cowboys. They have different personalities.
The Giants are more traditional. They want one of the original teams. They're steeped in a lot of heritage. They're a very humble team. You usually don't see a lot of rough housing and grandstanding. They have a real fraternal, very fraternal organization.
To give you an example of that, when I went up there when they got the Superbowl trophy, I was just waiting to go into a meeting, and I think I was talking to the receptionist and I said, "How'd you enjoy the game?"
She says, "It was fantastic," and she told me that they took everybody. When you go there, they're so respectful and they're so humble and so appreciative. You go to the Cowboys and the Cowboys are very razzle-dazzle.
There's nothing wrong with that. They just have a different personality. The Bengals right now, the Bengals, there couldn't be a bigger underdog than the Bengals. You know what I mean? The Bengals would sound different.
So we assess their personalities just because they're football teams. We will make that big piece, but they won't sound identical. One might be flashier.
The Giants one, which I don't know if I sent you or not, is a combination of traditional, it's also contemporary. So that blends its heritage with its modernism, and that's how we work our brands. We live them. We are the specialist of their sound. We look at every single thing and everything that they're about. So that by the time we write, we know who we're writing for.
Guy Kawasaki:
You mentioned that you test these sounds. How does that happen?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Testing can be on a variety of levels. It depends on the brand. It could be a smaller brand or a brand that just wants to test internally.
So they have their own people listen to the sounds and test them on the product and choose them. We test them for optimization to make sure that they're not making a lot of noise, to make sure that they're at the right frequency, to make sure that they're going to be able to scale up and scale down because if it's in a big environment like a theater, it's going to sound very different than it is on your phone.
We make sure that the quality is there.
Then we have outside testing, and that's something like what McDonald's did, and we didn't do the testing, we participated in the testing.
The one that we did the self-serve kiosk that we did, the prototype, they said, "Oh, that one, the colors are more vivid." The colors were not more vivid. It was on brand. It was researched, and it was developed in the right narrative.
They said, "Oh, the time to order was shorter." It was not shorter. It was on brand, and it was researched sound that fit exactly what it should. They saw things that they didn't see in the other three kiosks that were in all of them, but in that one that had the branded sound, they said, "Oh, you added the food going into the bag," and we didn't do any of that.
So there's that kind of testing, and then there's very high-quality analytical service that we use that can test with 500 people and do test sampling, and that's much more high end. So it just depends on what the client wants.
Some have in-house testing groups like Toshiba.
Guy Kawasaki:
At the end of this process, you have this sound. Actually, you probably have a collection of sounds. Is all that now intellectual property that's copyrighted so when I start my Honda, Honda can't take the sound that starts when you start a Porsche, and otherwise, there'd be lawsuits flying back and forth?
Audrey Arbeeny:
The final sounds are owned by the client. The remaining sounds go back to us. So we have them reviewed by musicologists for originality, and more and more, we're getting where we can copyright varieties of sounds because people are realizing that sound is just as important as your visual logo.
Guy Kawasaki:
So if another chip company made something that sounded like Intel Inside, Intel would sue them?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Probably.
Guy Kawasaki:
Would they win?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Probably.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is this a relatively recent development? I'm fundamentally from the marketing world. Until this interview, it never occurred to me that there's so much to sound. There's all about the user interface, the user experience, the marketing materials, all that kind of stuff, but everything's visual.
So when did this happen, or am I just a dinosaur and I'm just catching up right now?
Audrey Arbeeny:
The funny thing is that I'm doing this for twenty-five years. So I've done IBM ThinkPad. That's a long time. Eleven Olympics is twenty-five years. HBO has been doing it forever. Disney has been doing it forever, and it's not that it's new. It's just that people didn't put a value on it.
They'd say, "Oh, my neighbor could do this on garage band," and it was the first thing to be cut on a line item, but then certain things happened in the past few years, but it's always been there.
We've done projects, like I said, for twenty-five years. Then three or four different things happened. One, the technology got much better for us to put great sounds in products. So instead of buzzers and beeps and piezo sounds, we became able to put full quality, beautiful sounds into products.
Second is that the customer is in the driver's seat now, and that's all because of digital media. They know what happens when somebody says something controversial and all of a sudden the entire world knows that.
You line up the brands, sound logo, advertising, video bookends room warming soundtrack, events. If they're hearing a whole bunch of different things, music on hold, and they're a really cool brand but then they have easy listening on hold, it disconnects them from the brand.
Now, you have digital advertising. So that's another element in there, and you have OTT. The customer is absolutely in the driver's seat. They have options. They'll move on.
If they have access to everything new that's coming out and they will switch. They get a headset. They like it, they tell their friends, things like that.
The third thing, which I think is the most important because you're an evangelist for this for a fact is that we need to have an emotional connection, and the emotional connection is paramount.
People want to be connected emotionally to brands now. You don't just put an ad on TV. They want to interact with it. They want to go to events where they could meet the people or talk with you or have experiences in virtual reality.
Gaming is gigantic, and they want to participate because so many things are now void because they're digital. So we text and we don't talk and they want to feel that emotional connection.
In a lot of different ways, the kids in my family, they want to hold a book. They like feeling part of the brand, and that's why now it's this big thing. Sonic branding is a big thing right now, but it's because the technology drove it, and then the disconnect technology caused in certain areas pushed it even further.
Guy Kawasaki:
So when I watch NBC coverage of the Olympics, what am I hearing that you did?
Audrey Arbeeny:
What we do is we're there to be a resource. We work with NBC's internal team, and somebody has a story, and we put together music that fits that story, and they choose what they would like.
We go and we look at the footage, and we try to help them make the right choices that they want to make. We know that all the music is suitable for the Olympics, and the Olympics is a brand, and they're fantastic to work with.
Guy Kawasaki:
When you say NBC has a story, are you saying the big picture story of the entire Olympics or this is the story of one athlete that they're featuring?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Both. I could remember years ago, you would have an athlete that nobody knew and nobody expected to win, but they're story was really interesting.
All of a sudden, wanted to see them. They cared about them. That's the whole thing. Whether it be the Olympics or anything else, you want people to care.
Guy Kawasaki:
So let's say that Simone Biles says, "I'm not going to participate in this event for mental health," and she does that. So now, NBC has to cover that, and you're right there side by side creating sounds for that story that just happened a few hours ago?
Audrey Arbeeny:
No, and I can't talk too much about NBC.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's suppose that I'm a small business person. I'm not NBC, I'm not the NFL, I'm not the giants, I'm not Intel, I'm not Hyundai. I'm just a small business owner and I'm thinking, "Well, okay, I understand how they can all do this, but I have one store, I have one restaurant, I have a small software company, a consultancy. What am I supposed to do with sonic branding?"
Audrey Arbeeny:
What you're supposed to do with sonic branding is who are you, what are you about.
I teach sonic branding. The first exercise I have my students do is to brand themselves. What do you sound like? If people think of you, what do they think of? What do they think your personality is?
You'll have a few different characteristics that are definitely you. Like me, I'm pretty assertive, loud. I get things done. I'm very passionate about what I do.
So let's say I'm very dependable. I'm going to get it done. It's going to be right.
I have a composer who's very dependable. He's very quiet. You don't even know he is there sometimes. His dependable would sound different than mine.
So I ask them to brand themselves, bring me in music that represents you. When people think of you, this is what they think of. When you think of you, this is what they think of, and then they find that it's a lot harder than you think, but once you get to those characteristics, like if I were branding you, I'd want to know your personality, your legacy, your leadership.
You're an author. You're a leader. We would work with you to see what that meant. What does leader sound like for Guy versus what does leaders sound like for Audrey? I'm not comparing me with you, believe me, but-
Guy Kawasaki:
You should aim higher.
Audrey Arbeeny:
No, no, no. Then we would have walk on music. So when you went to a book signing or you were speaking at a conference, there would be your sound.
There wouldn't just be Yellow Submarine like it was for IBM. That really upset them. We would have a room warming soundtrack. So before they came in the room, very discreetly we were setting it up for the Guy sound. Video bookends-
Guy Kawasaki:
So Audrey?
Audrey Arbeeny:
What?
Guy Kawasaki:
So are you saying that if I did this right, when I agree to do a speech, I should say, "This is what I want you to play during the break before my speech. This is what I want you to play when I walk up, and this is what I want you to play when I walk off"? I should be at that level of detail?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, my God. Am I lacking? I'm nowhere close to that. Sometimes companies do ask, "What do you want your walk on music to be?"
Audrey Arbeeny:
So I should brand you.
Guy Kawasaki:
I tell them, "Play Queen, We Are The Champions."
Audrey Arbeeny:
No. If you had your own sound ... We've branded authors before. We've done a lot of podcasters now. I would say 75 percent of our clients do walk on music.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Yeah, and they'll do different versions for different people, but they're all similar.
Guy Kawasaki:
I feel so suboptimal, Audrey. Oh, my God. You ruined my day. So what do you do for a podcast or what should a podcaster do?
Audrey Arbeeny:
We do the same process we do for everyone else. We do room warming soundtrack because people are going to be filing in to hear them speak. For their podcast, we do a podcast open. We do transitions for when they say, "This podcast is brought to you by," whatever, or, "My next guest is so and so," and then a closeout, and then a walk on for when they go speak places.
Emily Bender from Beetle Moment, she said, "Audrey, two things happened to me. One, I was speaking and they were playing my music before I was speaking and somebody went up to them and said, 'Is Emily speaking? That's Emily's music.'"
Then she did another one for where they didn't play her music. She said, "It felt really weird," because she's so used to and her audience is so used to her music, and it's great. I'll send it to you. I'll send you two podcasts. They're great.
Guy Kawasaki:
I feel like such a failure right now. Oh, my God.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Oh, stop it. You're a failure? You've got to be kidding me.
Guy Kawasaki:
So let me ask you. Let's suppose it's a hypothetical podcaster and says, "All right, Audrey. How much is this going to cost me?" So how much does it cost a podcaster to do this, roughly?
I'm not going to hold you to this, but I'm just curious. Is it hundreds of thousands of dollars because no podcaster can afford that except Joe Rogan and you probably don't want to do Joe Rogan?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Not today.
Guy Kawasaki:
Put some Neil Young music for Joe Rogan.
Audrey Arbeeny:
We're all about making it work. So we've done them for $10,000, $20,000. You know what I mean? They don't have the money. We'll see what they have and work with what they have. Maybe we don't do all of those things, but we make sure that they get a sound, at least their podcast open, and then they could use that as their walk on.
If it was Joe Rogan, yeah, we'd charge him more money, but I'm talking about your general podcaster. No, it's pretty reasonable and it means a lot to them.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm afraid to tell you what we did for the music for my podcast. So what do you think we did?
I went to some royalty-free music sites and bought music and I bought some and I played it with the rest of the team and we said, "Okay. So this one is it," and we just went for it. That's it. I don't know. We paid ten bucks for that thing, something like that, and that was it.
Audrey Arbeeny:
What happens when somebody else uses the same piece?
Guy Kawasaki:
First of all, it's not clear to me that I would ever notice that because how would I know if some other podcast has my music, but you're right. That could easily happen.
Audrey Arbeeny:
It's not you. It's not uniquely saying Guy Kawasaki. Our music says your characteristics, your intelligence, your leadership, your authorship, your career, what makes you and nobody else.
Guy Kawasaki:
So if I'm a small business or a startup, clearly, a startup can afford ten, fifteen, twenty, even 100,000 bucks. That's so much they're paying agencies for other services, but I bet it just doesn't occur to most tech startups that we need a Sonic brand. They're thinking logo, all that kind of stuff.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Exactly.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't know about this, but I'm the Chief Evangelist of Canva. Canva should have a sound, a sonic brand.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Absolutely. Use it on the app. Once you do it, it could go so many places because of the way we craft it. We craft a blueprint, a foundation. Once we do that, video bookends, sounds, they're all already somewhat established.
Guy Kawasaki:
So let's assume that the client bought in, does it, and then you begin the discussion, all this kind of stuff. Now, how do you actually get the sound made? Do you call your buddies at the symphony and say, "Okay. Bring in your violinist, your cellist, and then we're going to make a recording"?
How do you make that once you've decided to do it? You don't just use garage band, right?
Audrey Arbeeny:
We have in-house composers. So all composers are on staff mainly because we've done some of the largest brands in the world and we often get them before they're even going to market. That's one.
Number two, our process is intense because of all the things that we do. We're not a production company. Don't write me a jingle for my ad. We're not that kind of company.
So they need special training. They're branding composers. So when they write something, they will write a paragraph back where they're saying, "Intelligent. What instrument is representing intelligent for you or me? Where did we capture the brand?"
So I know a lot of people freelance out. We don't. We have on staff in-house composers. We deal with a lot of confidential matters.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say that we'll take off the table clients past or current. Can you cite a few examples where you as a Sonic branding maven say, "Holy shit! They really got their act together. Whoever did their Sonic branding is fabulous."
So we can say, "All right. So this is who has good Sonic branding, just so we know."
Audrey Arbeeny:
Do I get to name all the ones we did?
Guy Kawasaki:
You can. Go ahead. Maybe I'm the most ignorant person in the world, but I think we're in areas that people have just never occurred to them.
So now, I want you to give us examples so we can develop an appreciation for who has got good Sonic branding because until forty-five minutes ago, I never thought about Sonic branding.
So who's in your hall of fame?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Okay. My hall of fame, the first one, everyone is going to laugh, and I get mocked all the time, but it's Disney because Disney is the ultimate sonic brand. If you call up for that Disney cruise, you can fly.
I'm telling you. While you're on hold, you're going to believe you can fly. Everything, when you walk out, when you're in the park, when you're walking up the ramp, everything is sonically branded in a very consistent way, in an amazing way.
I think that they do a fantastic job, and they're my number one, if I had to say somebody that across for many years is consistent.
The other one is NBC. If you listen really closely, you listen to how many times you hear the NBC Sonic branding throughout the day, whether it's going into the nighttime shows, whether it's in between commercials, whether it's on a show, they do an excellent job on that.
HBO, I'm very disappointed to hear that they're changing their sonic because they're one of my favorites, and they're ultimately consistent.
Apple used to be a real, real favorite of mine because everything from when they came out would think different and on was unbelievably consistent, but it's getting a little different now here and there.
So I wouldn't put it on my top five list or whatever, but those are brands.
I like what Abbot does, and I didn't do Abbot, but I like what Abbot does with their sound logo. I haven't deciphered it yet.
Abbott has the exact same logo, but sometimes it's three instruments, sometimes it's one instrument, but it's the exact same logo. I'm going to try and figure out. There has to be a pattern to it. Is one pharmaceuticals? What are the differences? I haven't had time to do it, but I really enjoy what they've been doing.
And if I could go on and on, I think Google does a great job. Google is delightful, Sprite, Googly.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, let's take Apple as an example.
Let's take Apple as an example. Now, it's been decades since I worked there. So I don't really know how it works inside anymore, but I have never heard the term Sonic branding when I was there. Frankly, everything branding was just whatever Steve Jobs likes.
That was a very simple test. So now, are you saying that at today's Apple, is there some VP of Sonic branding at Apple who says, "Okay. The startup sound on the iPod, iPhone, iPad, when you walk into the store, when you boot a Macintosh, when a Macintosh shuts down, all that is going to be working out together in all Sonic branding consistent"? Such a position exists in these companies?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. Feel like I've been brought out of dark ages.
Audrey Arbeeny:
I'm not sure there's one at Apple, which makes me think that there might not be because it's not consistent across the board all the way. It used to be with Steve. Steve Jobs, when I did the Apple, iDVD3 software, he wanted somebody who didn't know how to do a DVD, a dad doing a dance recital, to have default sound.
So if they didn't know how to put their own sound in, they had default sound. One is theater, one is celebration. They were all on brand for Apple, and the only people that listened to it was Steve Jobs and the creative director, and that's why it was so consistent.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, if it takes a Steve Jobs to be consistent, we're doomed. So Audrey, do you have a hall of shame that you can mention? For this, I say someone in the hall of shame is you would say to yourself, "Oh, my God! Those people have infinite money. How can they have such a crappy Sonic brand?"
Audrey Arbeeny:
Yeah, I do, but I would prefer not to go there.
Guy Kawasaki:
They might never become your client if we miss them.
Audrey Arbeeny:
Okay, and neither might anybody else because they might say, "I might be the next one she says that about."
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Fair enough. If I'm an entrepreneur sitting out there and saying, "Okay. I get it, Audrey. Thank you for opening my eyes, removing the scales from my eyes. I understand sonic branding is important. What's my next step?"
Audrey Arbeeny:
You have to be really careful nowadays because sonic branding, there used to be eight companies. Now, there's 500, but they're not doing what I would call sonic branding.
They're really not doing the research. They're not doing the discovery. They're not mapping out sounds, doing sound hierarchy, sound families, understanding placements, understanding technical.
I have had more people come to us and say, "We tried to do it with another company. Can you redo this?"
I think that there's a fine line because I'm hearing over and every single day somebody else is doing sonic branding, and when I listen to it, it's just sound. It's just sound. I don't get the branding part.
So I would start with, "Who am I? What do I stand for? What does my brand stand for?" Then I'd go to the strategy part, "Where am I trying to move to? Am I trying to make my company feel younger? Am I trying to be more global? Am I trying to repair something, a perception that somebody might have? What is the strategic part of it?"
You would be surprised, Guy, how many people are calling, and this is more on the corporate side because product people have used product sounds for a long time, but on the corporate side, and they'll literally say, "I don't know anything about this, but I know I need it."
Guy Kawasaki:
Amen.
Audrey Arbeeny:
So we'll start them off and we'll ask them to send us everything, mission statements, style guide, commercials, and we'll do our own research too, and we'll pull it all together and their competitors and we'll show them the spot that they can own.
Then from there, they decide. They'll decide yes. So we'll put sound to it and we'll test some sounds and see what's resonating with them age-wise, tempo-wise, instrument-wise, are they global, are they local.
We just did somebody that's from Alabama, and being from Alabama is a big part of this brand. So the music, the sound, it sounds like Alabama, where somebody else will say, "I'm a global brand. This has to work across the board."
Guy Kawasaki:
Is there any danger that a sound profile doesn't translate cross-culturally so that it would be a faux pas in one country or it sounds neurological and it just translates across all humans?
Audrey Arbeeny:
We do our research. So we figure that out.
Where is it going? We're doing something right now. It has to work. When we did the Xbox, it had to work around the world. There was no faux pas there. There was a lot of research done on testing sound to make sure that in Japan they enjoyed it as much as they did in Italy, and they enjoyed it as much as they did in Scandinavia, that it was working globally.
Then you have other brands that we will do the sound logo, and then there's a brand melody. We may use an oud Dubai or a guitar in the UK.
So we start to localize on, say, the music for the commercial, do a Latin version or do an Asian version, and there we can get localized so that it is global, the sound logo is global, the melody is global, but the instrumentation and the voice and the feel and the type of sound that would come from that country is within that music.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't want to cross sensory lines, but you have opened my eyes to sonic branding. Is that a good metaphor?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Is that a good thing?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. I had no idea. Probably everybody listening to this podcast is saying, "Guy, you are such an idiot. You had no idea about this?" Literally, I didn't. This is very, very interesting.
Audrey Arbeeny:
That's why we're going to do your sonic branding.
Guy Kawasaki:
You are?
Audrey Arbeeny:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
Should I send you 10,000 bucks right now?
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Audrey.
It's got me thinking about the sonic branding of Remarkable People.
Perhaps you'll see some changes in the future.
Until then, the Remarkable People team is on a mission to make you remarkable.
The team includes Jeff Sieh, Peg Fitzpatrick, Shannon Hernandez, Madisun the drop-in queen of Santa Cruz Nuismer, Alexis Nishimura, and Luis Magana.
Until next time, mahalo and aloha.