What Is Sonic Branding? The Power of Sound in Marketing
What is sonic branding? The short answer
Sonic branding is designing how a brand feels, in sound. It’s the sonic logo, the brand music, the voice and the small functional sounds a brand makes, all grown from one musical idea and used the same way, everywhere, for years. Its job is simple to say and hard to do: to make people know you, and feel something about you, before they’ve seen a thing.
At WithFeeling we put it in one line: a brand isn’t something you see. It’s something you feel.
Hear it in practice: our sonic logo reel, the sound of 45 brands.
A track is not an identity
Most brands already have a sound. They just didn’t choose it. It’s the stock track under last quarter’s ad, a different one under this quarter’s, the hold music nobody has listened to in years, and silence everywhere else. That isn’t a sonic identity. That’s a playlist.
Sonic branding starts when a brand decides what it should sound like, writes it once, and then keeps using it. The writing is the creative part. The keeping is the part that pays.
Why sound works on people
It goes straight to feeling
Our Head of Creative, John Smeddle, has a neat way of putting it: great visual branding evokes lust, great sonic branding evokes love. A logo asks to be looked at. Music doesn’t ask. It arrives, and it brings a feeling with it, which is why a few notes can take you back to a place, a person or a year.
Even rational decisions are emotional
Writing in LBB, John argued that B2B buyers may justify a contract with numbers, but they sign it because they trust the people behind it. Sound is a shortcut to that trust. It turns product, price and service into something that feels like a relationship, which is exactly why it belongs in B2B as much as in consumer brands.
Speed beats frequency
For decades brands bought repetition. The old rule of seven said people needed to see you seven times before they’d buy, and whole media departments were built on it. John argues that sound changes the maths: a sound that lands emotionally can do in one hearing what frequency used to need seven for. Sonic branding is increasingly judged by how fast it works, not how often it’s heard.
Consistency is where the value is
The measurable part is consistency. Veritonic’s Audio Logo Index found that brands using their audio logo consistently record 88% higher recall than brands that rarely or never use theirs. The asset is half the job. Using it, every time, is the half that pays.
What a sonic identity is made of
Every identity we build starts with one ownable piece of music and grows from there.
- The hero brand track: the full piece of music the brand owns. Everything else comes from it.
- The sonic logo: the signature, a few notes long, lifted from the hero track and crafted note by note, in short and long versions.
- Cut-downs: the brand track at the lengths advertising actually uses.
- Adaptations: the same melody in different moods and instruments. A calmer cut for a hotel lobby, a festive arrangement for Ramadan or National Day, a bigger one for a stadium.
- Functional sounds: notifications, payment confirmations, start-up sounds and on-hold music, so the brand sounds like itself in the small moments too.
- Voice: the people a brand speaks through, in which languages, and with what character.
- Stems and a usage guide: so every editor, agency and venue applies the sound the same way, in every market.
One idea, many expressions. If people can hum it, and recognise it in a lift, an app and a TV ad, it’s working.
The sound of arriving in a parking bay, grown into an app chime, hold music and radio and TV tags for Dubai’s smart city.
View case study ↗Where sonic branding lives (it isn’t just the end of an ad)
The sonic logo after the visual logo is the obvious place. It’s also the least interesting one. Some of the most valuable work happens elsewhere.
In places. For Parkin, Dubai’s parking brand, the sound of arrival, a car easing into a bay and then the crisp click of the lock, became the signature. At the Dubai World Cup, the music has to carry more than 80,000 people at Meydan from the first note to the finish line.
In hospitality, almost silently. As we wrote in LBB, the next step for hotels and restaurants is sound guests never consciously notice: music that quietly rewards them for being there and keeps them in a state of flow. The opposite of muzak.
Inside the company. Sound binds people too. John makes the case that with teams spread across cities and home offices, a shared sound is one of the few things left that can make a company feel like one place.
In the world’s own sounds. A brand doesn’t always need instruments. For Growdash, a platform that helps restaurants grow, we built the sonic logo from the real sounds of a working kitchen (ignition, cutlery, chopping), then let a clean rising line climb out of the noise. Chaos in, clarity out. John calls this sound mining: finding the sound a brand already has in the world, and shaping it.
A sonic logo built from the real sounds of a working kitchen, fused with digital clicks. Chaos in, clarity out.
View case study ↗Sonic branding examples you already know
McDonald’s. The five notes, ba da ba ba ba, outlived the 2003 campaign that launched them. The jingle was advertising; the five notes became the brand.
Intel. Decades on, a handful of notes still says what’s inside the machine, without a word.
Emirates. One of John’s favourites. The airline’s boarding music, played on board, online and on air in every market, became a sonic watermark for Dubai itself: excitement and calm at once, a place where everything works.
Airlink. And sometimes it happens by accident. When two Airlink jets swept low over Cape Town Stadium before a Springboks test, what everyone remembered was the roar, past 100 decibels. No audio signature could compete with it.
And from our own work: the Sound of Saudi for the Ministry of Tourism (Silver for Best Audio Brand at the Transform Awards MEA 2026); the Islamic Arts Biennale identity, with live oud, qanun and cello (Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2026, Bronze at the Clio Music Awards); “This Is Our Time” for Expo 2020 Dubai, which went to number one in the MENA region; and Your Bazaar (Gold for Best Audio Brand at the Transform Awards MEA 2025). More in our best sonic branding examples.
Live oud, qanun and cello, recorded in London. Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2026.
View case study ↗How to create a sonic identity, in five stages
The same five stages, on every project:
- Check your current sound. Round up what the brand already sounds like in its ads, app, stores and on hold, and listen to the competition.
- Decide your sound style. Get the team in a room and (politely) argue it out until there’s a direction, and a playlist, everyone agrees on. This is the sonic strategy.
- Create your sound. Our composers write three demos: a full brand track, a sonic logo, or both. We choose one together, refine it, and test it on real people.
- Put it all together. A usage guide that says what to use, when and where, and a session to show the team how.
- Keep it fresh. Check in, measure, and refresh the arrangements as the brand evolves, while the core melody stays fixed.
Two things we add to every identity. Implicit Association Testing measures the subconscious response to a sound, blind and in association with the brand, so the decision isn’t down to who in the room likes it most. And every core composition goes through independent musicology review, so the identity is provably original and safe to own for years. The full process is on our sonic branding page.
Owned or rented: sonic branding v music licensing
Licensing a famous track borrows someone else’s emotion for a campaign. Sonic branding builds an emotion you own for years. Most brands need both: something they own that never changes, and borrowed songs for the moments that need a hit. We go into where the budget should go in Music Licensing vs Original Music.
How to choose who builds it
John has a rule of thumb: be wary of any agency that spends the first half hour talking about itself. The data-heavy supplier wins on due diligence, the celebrity-composer pitch wins on dinner-party value, and the team that’s genuinely interested in your problem becomes the partner you rely on for years. Our full checklist is in How to Choose a Sonic Branding Agency.
What sonic branding costs
At WithFeeling, a sonic logo and brand track, the core of a full sonic identity, typically ranges from $13,500 to $82,000+ (50,000 to 300,000+ AED). Testing, musicology, a full sonic system and adaptations across markets add to that. The full breakdown is in How Much Does Sonic Branding Cost?
Final thought
John has a question for marketing teams, and it’s the one to end on. If your CEO asked why you don’t have sonic branding, what would you say? “Too expensive” doesn’t hold up for long. As he puts it, it would seem that not having sonic branding is more expensive.
WithFeeling is a global sonic branding agency based in Dubai, UAE, working with brands across the Gulf, the UK, Ireland, the US and beyond. If you’d like to hear what your brand could sound like, email hello@withfeeling.com.
Go deeper with our guides to building a sound identity and musical intelligence.
Sonic branding FAQs
Sonic branding is the strategic use of sound to make a brand recognisable: a sonic logo, a brand track, and the audio cues used across advertising, apps, products and spaces, all built from one consistent musical identity so people know the brand by ear.
A complete sonic identity usually includes a hero brand track, a sonic logo in short and long versions, cut-downs at standard advertising lengths, adaptations for different moods and instrumentation, stems for editors, and a usage guide so every team applies the sound the same way.
At WithFeeling, a sonic logo and brand track, the core of a full sonic identity, typically ranges from $13,500 to $82,000+ (50,000 to 300,000+ AED). Where a project lands depends on scope: add audience testing, musicology, a full sonic system and multiple adaptations across markets, and the investment can be considerably more.
A jingle is a single piece of advertising music, usually with lyrics, tied to one campaign. A sonic identity is a system: a signature melody and sound palette designed to last for years and work across every touchpoint, from a two-second app sound to a full anthem.
Yes. Sound is processed faster than visuals and stored with emotion, which is why sonic identities like Intel, McDonald’s and Netflix are recognised in under a second. Well-built sonic assets consistently score higher for recall and brand attribution than the same ads without them.
Recent WithFeeling examples include the Islamic Arts Biennale identity (Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2026, Bronze at the Clio Music Awards), the Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia’s sound of Saudi (Silver at the Transform Awards MEA 2026), and Your Bazaar (Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2025). Globally, Intel, McDonald’s and Netflix remain the benchmark sonic logos.
Sonic branding is also called audio branding, sound branding or acoustic branding, and the finished asset set is often called a sonic identity or an audio identity. The terms are used interchangeably. Sonic branding and audio branding are the two most common in the industry, and they describe the same discipline: designing how a brand sounds, then applying it consistently across every touchpoint.
A sonic strategy is the plan that comes before any music is written. It defines what the brand should sound like and why, which audiences and markets the sound has to work for, which touchpoints it will appear in, from advertising to apps to physical spaces, and how success will be measured after launch. The strategy is what stops a sonic identity becoming a nice piece of music that nobody uses.
Usually one to three seconds. That’s long enough to be known and brief enough to close an ad, an app action or a payment without getting in the way. The hero brand track it comes from can run two minutes or more.
Melody needs no translation, so the sonic logo travels on its own. Where a voice is involved, we cast and direct in Arabic and English, so the brand sounds like itself in both.
We test it before launch with Implicit Association Testing, which measures the subconscious emotional response, blind and in association with the brand, and we track recognition after launch.
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