How 'sonic branding' can provide leverage in a 'voice-first, sound-first world'

Audiobrain Owner and Executive Producer Audrey Arbeeny joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss "sonic branding" and how signature sounds can help elevate brands.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Chances are, you hear it multiple times every day, you just don't realize it. Sonic branding, it's a trademark or signature sound that helps to immediately identify a particular product or service. Here's an example of sonic branding at work for the Premier Hockey Federation.

[THRILLING MUSIC PLAYING]

[WHISTLES]

[CHEERING]

Ah, it kind of gets the heart racing, right? Well, the company behind that signature sound is Audiobrain. And joining us is the company's owner and executive producer, Audrey Arbeeny. Audrey, thanks so much for being with us. I know that you work with lots of Fortune 500 companies, including Google, Microsoft, even the Olympics. Tell us why a signature sound is so important and how can it enhance a company's brand.

AUDREY ARBEENY: It's really interesting, because right now, everybody is saying, this is the big thing. The big new thing is voice-first, sound-first. I've been doing this for 25 years, and what it does is it differentiates. And sonic branding is creating a creative, strategic, and holistic music, sound, voice, vibration for a brand that gets then leveraged across every, um, important touchpoint for a better user experience, better customer experience, and better brand experience.

So when you don't do that, you wind up sounding like everyone else. And now that we're becoming a very voice-first, sound-first world, it's becoming even more important, which is why it's, like, the top story. But it's-- it's been around. Technology has forced it to really take front and center.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Right. Audrey, I'm wondering how you even begin to compose a signature sound, sort of capture the essence of a-- of a brand, if you will? Quick-- quickly tell us, walk us through that process.

AUDREY ARBEENY: Sure. What we do is-- you know, my composers are in-house, because a lot of the stuff that we do, we do a year or two years before it's even released. So what we do is we start-- it's-- it's exactly the same as a visual identity system or a branding system. We have discover, we have strategy, we have creative. Then we have implementation, and then we have maintenance.

So when we do our discovery, what makes this brand different than any other brand, we live and breathe that brand. And we are not-- we are very boutique. This is all we do, is sonic branding. No one's going to call us up to do a commercial. We're not a music production company. We have science behind us. We have testing behind us.

And we do everything we can with the company to find out what makes them them, just like what makes your personality you and what makes my personality me. And then we sort of strategize together as to what the characteristics that make it incredibly unique are. At that point that we're in agreement and we have our sonic mood board, we then begin to develop concepts, and we start to-- it's almost like a handcrafted shoe. It's-- it's--

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Mm-hmm.

AUDREY ARBEENY: um, like a sonic blueprint. Or I like to call it-- my composers don't, but I call it like a sonic box of Crayola crayons.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So, Audrey, let me-- let me ask, are you seeing that more and more companies are budgeting for sonic branding? This is actually becoming part of their marketing strategy?

AUDREY ARBEENY: Absolutely. There is absolutely no question. They don't have a choice, because you have sound in devices, you have Alexa, you have sound in automobiles, you have sound controls on-- on televisions. You-- you can't really, right now, ignore it. It's gotten to a point where you can't ignore it.

And like I said, I've been doing it for a long time, and I've been doing it pretty successfully. I've done the Xbox 360. I've been the music supervisor for 10 Olympics for NBC. I mean, we've always been doing it. But people weren't really getting it. Yeah, my-- my neighbor could do it on a garage band.

That doesn't work anymore. It's got to be consistent. It's got to be holistic. It's got to be unified. Because if they hear it sounding one way in one place, and one way in another place, one way in another place, then you're really going to lose your audience, because your authenticity is gone.

And the other thing, too, is that, um, people want to be involved and engaged with the brand, which is-- that's what's new. You know what I mean? They want to participate with the brand.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And certainly, those sounds, those recognizable sounds help them to do that. Audrey Arbeeny, owner and executive producer at Audiobrain. Thanks so much.