Bates gives clients an insight into ‘Sonic Branding’

“How would someone who is blind perceive your brand?” The question posed by a visiting former Creative Director of Bates India and co-founder of BrandMusiq in Mumbai, to an audience of senior marketing people from among Bates’ clients, set the tone for a unique presentation on how brands are perceived through music and sound. Bates Strategic Alliance, the leading integrated marketing communications agency, hosted their clients for a presentation and discussion on ‘Sonic Branding’ a technique that aims to define and express a brand through another untapped branding medium – music.

The session was conducted by Rajeev Raja, a musician and adman with over 25 years of experience in the industry, who is doing some pioneering work in the field of branding through music.  Rajeev, a jazz flautist, began the session by urging the audience to close their eyes, as he played a piece of music on his flute, and consider the imagery that the music brought to mind. As the marketers revealed the imagery that they each visualized, the salient learning was that music creates imagery and evokes emotions - both important to advertising and branding - and that these could be broadly similar among an audience.

 “That is the power of music” explained Rajeev, “It communicates both vivid imagery and emotion and is consistent – a piece of music heard by different people could inspire a similar reaction. These two characteristics make it a very powerful tool for defining and communicating the brand identity.”

Rajiv explained that the way that advertisers produce music for their brands is fundamentally flawed. Usually music tracks are created for TV commercials to fit the particular commercial and not the brand. It is only at the point of creating a TV commercial or a radio jingle that the music decided upon. “This methodology doesn’t allow you to create a strong sonic identity for the brand,” Rajiv elaborated. “What we do is sit down with our client brand owners and brand managers and seek to understand the brand’s heritage, values and personality and then define its ‘archetype’ – from among the 12 types elucidated by Carol Pearson based on psychologist Jung’s classification. We may define the dominant archetype and even a couple of subdominants, just like in musical chords. This then becomes the platform for us to compose a ‘Soundscape’ for the brand that matches that archetype.”

According to Rajeev, a ‘Soundscape’ is a musical track that is about 3-4 minutes long, expressing the brand’s persona, emotions and values. The ‘Soundscape’ also has a musical signature or logo, or ‘Mogo’ as Rajeev has named it, embedded in the music. The ‘Mogo’ is a memorable cadence that people connect with the brand whenever they hear it, and it encapsulates the brand concisely and acts as the sonic equivalent of a logo.

“This methodology allows you to create a consistent brand sound that communicates the brand persona, and can be used across multiple platforms - in TV commercials, on radio, in activations, digitally, etc. In a world that is cluttered with competing brands, the challenge is to give your brand a strong identity that will allow you to differentiate it from others, and make it easily identifiable. Using consistent brand music like this allows you to make your brand stand out distinctively” Rajeev explained.

Rajeev used a Coca-Cola case study where a 5 note musical signature had been done for the “Open Happiness” campaign, which then went on to get used widely on having been subtly woven into different commercials and various types of other executions. Coke then took it to the next level when they subtly incorporated it into the song “Wavin’ Flag” by the Somali-born, Canadian recording artist K’naan, and released the remix during the 2010 World Cup with a music video.

Bates Chairman & CEO Nimal Gunewardena, himself a musician, concluded the session saying that the concept of Sonic Branding could give brand marketers another powerful layer in fleshing out a rich persona for their brands and that he would be happy together with Rajeev to help clients build musically strengthened brands that added to the brand experience, memorability and affinity among all consumers.