Health Holding Company sits at the heart of one of the most ambitious healthcare transformations in the world: the reorganisation of Saudi Arabia’s public health system into a network of regional clusters serving millions across the Kingdom. Before we wrote a single note, we asked a harder question: how should it feel to call a hospital?
- Client
- Health Holding Company
- Agency
- WithFeeling
Sound
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HEALTH HOLDING COMPANY: THE PULSE I CARRY
When HHC asked us to give that mission a voice, the brief carried a weight few sonic projects do. This would not be a sound for a campaign or a product. It would be the sound a person hears in some of the most vulnerable moments of their life. Together with Sonic UX researcher Dr. Caitlyn Trevor, we built the Kingdom’s most researched sonic identity: a hero track, a five-note sonic logo, a full IVR and on-hold system, and seasonal variations, all moving to the pulse of care itself.
Sound
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EID VARIATION
THE CHALLENGE
This identity had to live somewhere most identities never go: the telephone line of a hospital, where audio is stripped to a narrow 300 to 3400 Hz band and callers arrive anxious. Our audit of 83 healthcare providers across the GCC and the UK found a category wide open: only 35% used any hold music or sonic branding at all, and 75% of their phone systems were neither minimal nor intuitive. The sound had to be culturally Saudi, clinically calming, memorable across every touchpoint, and engineered to survive the phone line intact.
Sound
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HAJJ VARIATION
THE APPROACH
HHC’s five-pointed star became the composition itself: a five-note motif, one tone for each healthcare region, layered into a single resolving chord over a 72 BPM pulse, the rhythm of a healthy resting heartbeat. Guided by research spanning music cognition, cross-cultural music therapy and usability testing with Saudi callers, we composed with midrange instruments that survive telephony, the oud, ney, cello and piano, and drew on the calming modes of the maqāmāt. Of three full creative routes, HHC chose The Pulse I Carry: a calm, pulse-like weave of organic, Arabic and electronic instruments, and a sonic logo that refuses the minor chord and lifts to major. Around it we designed the full IVR experience, a warm bilingual voice moving seamlessly between Arabic and English, short intuitive menus, every asset mastered specifically for the phone line, plus dedicated variations for Eid, Hajj and Saudi National Day.
Sound
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KSA NATIONAL DAY VARIATION
THE RESULT
The full system, hero track, sonic logo, IVR suite, on-hold music and seasonal variations, is now live across Health Holding Company’s touchpoints, meeting callers in moments of worry with a steady pulse and a voice that speaks their language. Five notes. Five regions. One pulse. Sonic identity by WithFeeling. Sonic UX research: Dr. Caitlyn Trevor.
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