A logo's job is to represent the essence of its
brand’s character – to introduce it if we
don’t know it, or to remind us of it if we do. As a
photograph is to a person, a logo is to a brand. Visual
logos are proven, effective and ubiquitous – which is
where they have started to run into rapidly diminishing
returns.
I call the problem ‘overmessaging’. Each of us
now encounters a staggering 30,000 commercial messages
every single day, and the vast majority of them are visual.
This means that for the next few years at least, sonic
logos – by which I mean short sonic mnemonics that
are the exact audio counterparts of the visual logo –
are going to be worth considering simply because they are
relatively rare and can thus act as powerful
differentiators. However there’s more to sonic logos
than curiosity value alone: used wisely, they work
exceptionally well. They also have a surprisingly long
pedigree.
Sonic logos have actually been around for hundreds of
years: street calling used to be the main way tradesmen
advertised their services, as wonderfully romanticised in
the film Oliver. It’s not so long since that practice
died: I can remember the ‘rag-and-bone’
man’s mournful shout of “anyoldiron?”
from my childhood in London. The modern-day equivalent is
the ice cream van: just watch the cathartic effect of its
chimes on surrounding buildings on a hot summer’s day
to see the potency of sonic logos deployed in the right
place at the right time. Most ice cream chimes are generic,
but in Sweden the Hemglass ice cream tune is a universally
known and loved sonic brand.
As soon as the advertising industry got sound to play with,
it saw the potential of memorable music/voice combinations
and the jingle and tagline were born. The dividing line
between jingle or a tagline an a sonic logo is blurred. In
general, jingles and taglines come and go with campaigns
and rarely live for more than a few years. Even the most
memorable usually get retired. “For hands that do
dishes…”; “It’s the real
thing”; these and many more once-mighty jingles or
taglines are now languishing in retirement homes, though
the brands are still very much with us today.
Some taglines are so strong that they have become sonic
logos. One in particular has outlasted entire generations
of customers: Tony the tiger has been saying
“they’re gr-r-r-r-reat!” since 1951. This
is probably the longest-running sonic logo in the world,
and it has now outlived its voice-over artist. Thurl
Ravenscroft was famous for many Disney voices but Tony was
his greatest legacy. He voiced the tiger for 54 years until
his death in 2005, when Lee Marshall was appointed to carry
the tradition forward.
Over the years, some sonic logos have even been registered
as trademarks or service marks: the roar of the MGM lion
and the old NBC three-tone chime are two examples.
These examples notwithstanding, it wasn’t until the
1990s that sonic logos started to be taken really seriously
and their use considered by many major brands. The sea
change came with Intel. Its four-note sonic logo, composed
by Austrian musician Walter Werzowa, has become one of the
best-known sounds in the world, and has spearheaded
Intel’s extraordinary success as a brand –
given that this is a product nobody ever sees and nobody
ever buys.
Today, sonic logos are more in play then ever before. UK
insurance giant Direct Line has a sprightly bugle call,
which speaks volumes about urgency, assistance and
playfulness in just three seconds. Apple has its
comforting, uplifting start-up sound, engineered in 1991 by
Jim Reekes and still shipping 16 years later. (It is
inexplicable that the mighty Microsoft has never seen the
value of a single start-up sound; the sound of Windows has
changed with every successive version of the software, so
that now there is no sound of Windows. They may be learning
through: huge amounts of time and money were invested in
‘a language of sounds’ for the Xbox 360.)
Lufthansa has invested in a corporate sound, comprising
four rising tones that are aimed to convey feelings of
taking off and wellbeing. Siemens has recently added a
seventh element to its branding: sound has now joined logo,
claim, typeface, colours, layout and style as one of the
basic building blocks of the Siemens brand. The company has
created both an ‘audio signature’ (aka a sonic
logo) and also some mood sound as part of its new palette.
Even political parties are joining in: Wales’s Plaid
Cymru has a short sonic logo to welcome you in peace and
harmony to its website.
The evidence is that more and more major brands are
creating a sonic logo as a matter of course. With the
continuing rise of mobile devices (along with custom ring
tones and downloaded digital sound) I believe we have not
yet scratched the surface of the sonic logo.
Is it time your brand found its voice – before your
competitors find theirs?
----------------------------------------------------
Julian Treasure is author of the groundbreaking book Sound
Business (http://www.soundbusiness.biz ) and Chairman of
The Sound Agency (http://www.thesoundagency.com), an
applied sound consultancy with clients such as BP, Honda,
Tesco and Unilever. He lives in London with his Italian
wife, children's book author Swan Treasure.
