Best Sonic Branding Examples of 2025: 8 Identities That Defined the Year

2025 was the year sonic branding stopped being a finishing touch. Brands that spent the last decade arguing about logo colours and brand fonts started taking sound seriously as a strategic asset, not just a closing flourish on a TV ad.

You could see it in the briefs coming in. Government entities asked for full sonic identity systems, not jingles. Banks wanted notification sounds designed to the same standard as their logos. Cultural institutions commissioned scores for permanent exhibitions, not just openings. The category matured.

What follows is not a ranking. It is a working list of the best sonic branding examples of 2025, the work that either set a benchmark, taught us something, or reset what good looks like. Three of them are ours, and we will be upfront about that throughout. We are including them because they won awards in 2025 that we are proud of, and because we think the strategic decisions behind each one are interesting on their own terms. The other five are global benchmarks whose work continued to define the standard the rest of us are measured against.

What “best” actually means in sonic branding

Before the list, a word on the standard. The sonic identities that hold up are not the ones with the catchiest hook. They are the ones built to do four things well.

First, they are distinctive. You can pick them out of a crowded soundscape inside two seconds.

Second, they are scalable. They work on a 30-second spot, a one-second app notification, an arena anthem, and a hold-music loop without sounding like four different brands.

Third, they have emotional logic. The sound matches what the brand wants people to feel before they have time to think about it.

Fourth, they age well. Five years after launch, they still feel like the brand, not a period piece.

Every project below clears all four. Here is what 2025 had to show for itself.

1. Islamic Arts Biennale: “And All That Is In Between”

The Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s second Islamic Arts Biennale opened in Jeddah on 25 January 2025, taking place at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport, a site that for centuries has been a port of entry for pilgrims journeying to Makkah. The exhibition’s title, “And All That Is In Between”, is drawn from the Quranic verse “And God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in between”.

WithFeeling was commissioned to create the sonic identity. The brief was less about a logo and more about a system. The sonic identity moved with the visitor journey: contemplative washes in the historical galleries, more rhythmic textures in the outdoor sections, sparse signature moments at the threshold of each chapter. The work treated sound the way the architecture treated light, as something that shapes the experience without ever asking for attention.

Disclosure: this is our work. We are including it because the piece won Gold at the International Sound Awards 2025, Silver at the Creativepool Awards 2025, and Bronze at the Clio Music Awards in 2026, making it the only MENA-headquartered sonic branding project to win at the Clios that year. The strategic lesson behind it, in our experience, is restraint. Cultural institutions often default to sound that announces itself. The biennale earned its presence by holding back.

2. Mastercard’s continued sonic ecosystem

Mastercard’s sonic identity is no longer news. The melody, launched in 2019, is now embedded in over 200 countries across acceptance sounds, app interactions, and brand spots. What 2025 demonstrated is what scale looks like when sonic branding actually scales.

Their team continued to commission new arrangements across genres, including regional adaptations for various markets. The melody stayed the same. The instrumentation flexed.

The lesson is structural. Mastercard treats its sonic identity the way Coca-Cola treats its red. The system is the asset, not any one rendition. Most brands trying to build sonic identity systems still think they need one fixed piece of music. Mastercard proves the opposite.

3. Your Bazaar

Your Bazaar is a Dubai-based online marketplace serving an audience of over 100 nationalities. The brief to WithFeeling was simple: make it memorable, and make it cut through on radio where listeners are usually multitasking. The harder part was unsaid. The sound needed to feel familiar to dozens of cultures simultaneously, without favouring any of them.

The solution was unorthodox. We adapted the final phrase of “Happy Birthday”, a melody that is universally recognised and, importantly, out of copyright, and mapped it to the brand’s six-syllable URL: “Your-Ba-Zaar-Dot-AE”. The result is a jingle that feels instantly familiar but never quite places. Listeners often do not register the “Happy Birthday” reference consciously, which is what makes it stick. We designed six accompanying sound effects for product moments (search, save, checkout, delivery confirmation, notification, swipe) and built the melody to flex into regional endings “.sa”, “.om”, and “.qa” without losing the core hook.

The work won Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2025 and Silver at the International Sound Awards 2025. Pre and post launch testing through Veritonic showed strong attribution, high recall, and a measurable uplift in perceived brand warmth and trust. The lesson, for us, is that distinctiveness does not require originality. Sometimes the most distinctive thing you can do is reframe something the audience already knows.

4. Intel and the long life of a five-note motif

Intel’s “Bong” was composed by Walter Werzowa in 1994. Werzowa has periodically updated it ever since, modernising the textures without ever touching the five notes underneath. By 2025 it was 31 years old, and still working.

We include it because longevity is the part of sonic branding nobody talks about. Most identity work is judged on launch. Almost none of it is judged on whether it still feels right a decade later. Intel’s does.

The lesson is to design for the brand’s lifetime, not the next campaign. A sonic logo that needs replacing in five years was probably not a sonic logo. It was a campaign track.

5. Dubai Racing Club: “Dubai Millennium”

The Dubai World Cup, held annually at Meydan Racecourse with a USD 12 million purse, is the centrepiece of Dubai’s sporting calendar. WithFeeling was commissioned by the Dubai Racing Club to create the sonic identity for the event. We called the piece “Dubai Millennium“.

The composition was built around four sonic elements, each tied to a different facet of the brand. The first was the pounding rhythm of horse hoofbeats on turf, the foundational sound of racing itself. The second was big, kinetic drums to carry the adrenaline of the race. The third was traditional Arabic instrumentation, threaded through to root the piece in the UAE and remind global audiences that this race is unmistakably Emirati. The fourth was sweeping orchestral grandeur, scaled to match the prestige of the event and the international stature of the competition.

The work was originally created in 2022 and has carried the Dubai World Cup brand through subsequent years. In 2025, it won Silver at the Transform Awards MEA. The lesson here is closer to the Intel point: a sonic identity built well from the start does not need replacing. It compounds. Three years after launch, “Dubai Millennium” continues to anchor one of the most heavily televised sporting events in the region.

6. Netflix “Ta-Dum”

Lon Bender’s two-tone Netflix opener, designed in 2015, is shorter than this sentence and more recognisable than most logos. By 2025 it had become one of the most heard pieces of music in the world, surfacing billions of times a day across every device Netflix runs on.

The trick is in the construction. The two percussive hits at the start are Bender’s actual wedding ring striking a cabinet, layered with a slowed anvil sound. The melodic resolve at the end is a reversed electric guitar phrase from sound designer Charlie Campagna. The full story, documented in the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast, makes clear that the work was built from sound design more than musical composition, and the result lands differently to anything else in streaming.

What 2025 confirmed is something the industry had been quietly arguing about for years: shorter is better. A sonic logo that runs for one second forces strategic clarity in a way a six-second piece never will. You cannot hide behind a chord progression. You cannot lean on a melody. You either land or you do not.

Netflix lands.

7. HSBC’s “Together We Thrive”

HSBC’s sonic identity, composed by electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre and delivered with music marketing agency My Love Affair, launched in 2019 alongside the bank’s brand refresh. Seven different edits were created to flex across HSBC’s 60-plus markets, designed to work in branches, on apps, in ad campaigns, and during in-flight sponsorships.

The strategic choice that makes it work is the emotional positioning. Most financial brands chase trust and end up sounding identical. HSBC chose to sound like the world it serves: open, hopeful, slightly idealistic. By 2025 it had held up across multiple ad cycles, leadership changes, and brand evolutions.

The lesson is positioning. Sonic identity is a positioning decision before it is a creative decision. If you pick the same emotional territory as every competitor, the best composer in the world cannot save you.

Listen to Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Together We Thrive (The Sound of HSBC)” on YouTube ↗

8. Audi’s “Heartbeat”

Audi’s sonic identity, developed in partnership with German agencies Klangerfinder and S12, uses the actual pulse of a human heartbeat as a rhythmic foundation. The original heartbeat dates to 1996. The 2017 redesign by the same agencies repositioned it as a more progressive, electronic sound while keeping the rhythmic logic intact. Through 2025 it continued to evolve across Audi’s growing electric and digital touchpoints.

What makes the work hold up is the conceptual rigour. Sonic identities built on metaphors tend to date because metaphors date. A heartbeat does not. It connects to engineering precision, to driver presence, to the emotional core of why anyone bought an Audi in the first place.

The lesson is the difference between a sonic logo and a sonic concept. Audi has a concept. The logo is just one expression of it. That is why every new rendition still sounds like Audi.

What 2025 actually proved

If there is a through-line in these eight projects it is this: the sonic identities that won in 2025 were the ones built as systems, not artefacts. A motif is not a system. A logo is not a system. A system is a set of rules for how a brand sounds across every touchpoint, refreshed for every context, but still unmistakably itself.

Most brands are still buying motifs. The ones who treat sound as infrastructure are the ones whose work will still be working in 2030.

The MENA-led work on this list, our own included, shares a particular thread worth naming. Each project earned cultural credibility by drawing on regional musical traditions without falling into pastiche. Arabic instrumentation in “Dubai Millennium” is not decoration. The reference to a universal melody in “Your Bazaar” works because the multicultural reality of Dubai needs a sound that does not pick a side. The biennale’s sonic identity uses traditional instruments to carry contemporary ideas. Cultural fluency is not a finishing touch. It is the difference between a sonic identity that lands and one that gets pulled three years in.

What to look for if you are commissioning sonic branding

A few practical signals, since clients have asked us this question often enough that it is worth answering in writing.

First, ask the agency how they would brief the work, not how they would execute it. The best sonic identities start with a strategy document, not a melody. If the conversation jumps straight to references and moodboards, the work will probably feel arbitrary in three years.

Second, ask to see the system, not just the logo. If an agency can show you only the three-second motif and not the variation framework, the long-form, the UX sounds, the brand voice guidance, and the governance rules, they have sold someone a logo and called it an identity.

Third, ask about longevity. Any sonic identity that needs to be refreshed inside five years was probably scoped wrong from the start. Brand sound is meant to compound. If it cannot compound, it is just a campaign with a release date.

Fourth, ask about MENA. If you are operating in the region and your sonic agency cannot speak fluently about cultural musical conventions, scale modes, instrumentation choices, and the difference between a Khaleeji rhythm and a Levantine one, the work will land as foreign even if it sounds technically polished.

The wave behind 2025

2026 will be the year more brands figure this out. The MENA region in particular has begun commissioning the kind of strategic sonic work that European and American markets have been doing for a decade. The Islamic Arts Biennale was one signal. The Transform Awards MEA recognising work in our own categories was another. The wave behind these projects is bigger.

The brands who get there first will own a category position that visual identity can no longer give them. Visual systems are now table stakes. Sound is the next ground worth taking.

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