Brands are coming for your ears

Pavlov would be lovin’ it. The man who used metronomes, buzzers and harmoniums to explore involuntary reflex actions would be in his element observing the beeps, chirps, plinks, pulses, tings and swooshes that command us — to say nothing of our faux-friendly commands to Alexa, Bixby, Cortana and Siri. (Hey!)
The latest front in branding’s battle for our attention is audio — as will be familiar to anyone who has measured out their lockdown with Netflix “ta-dums.” By this stage of late-stage capitalism, even the smallest brands have a “look and feel.” Now, faced with a saturated visual field and a consumer stampede to audio, companies are looking to complement their “tone of voice” with a matching “voice of tone.”
In contrast to advertising’s traditional audio tactics of iconic singles and vexatious jingles, “sonic branding” aspires to develop a strategic “soundscape” of “aural
assets” — stings, bumpers, earcons and Ohrwurms — by sequencing each brand’s “audio DNA.”
The “Sound of O2,” for instance, was driven by this bold vision:
“Breathing … it’s the first and last thing we do. The most natural rhythm of all. A living orchestra of inhalations and exhalations soundtracking every moment of our day.”
And in 2017, Visa proudly announced it had spent more than a year working with three specialist agencies to select from 200 options this one-second, two-tone chirrup:
Of course, corporate audio is nothing new. The chimes of the National Broadcasting Company were developed almost a century ago, and Brian Eno’s start-up sound for Windows 95 is about to turn 26.
But the intensity and ubiquity of sonic branding is reaching a pitch where the unlikeliest of organisations feel compelled to plant a flag on the audio spectrum: Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority now has a sonic logo, as does the German dictionary Duden.
Even Intel, creator of the most pestering earcon yet, doubled down on its bong quintet by commissioning (without irony) an orchestral interpolation with Beethoven’s Fifth:
Sonic signatures are as old as life on Earth. From the booms, chirrups, clucks, croaks, trills and whistles of mating, to the barks, bellows, hisses, rattles, roars and snarls of attack — animals of every stripe unleash a symphony of “trademark sounds” to woo and warn.
The earliest human audio brands were similarly inspired by two elemental forces. First, conflict — where battle cries, war drums and an orchestra of horns, pipes, fifes and bugles were used to establish esprit de corps and broadcast commands over the thunder of combat.
Second, commerce — where hand-bells and street cries allowed itinerant peddlers to announce their arrival and local vendors to hawk their wares.

—Bloomberg