Melody the key to successful audio branding
Audio logos with a melody have a 17% higher level of memorability compared to those without a musical element, said SCA national head of creativity, Matt Dickson, at the SCA Your Brain On Music Webinar this week.
Melody was the key indicator of a successful audio or sonic logo, followed by brand mention, which increased memorability by 15% on average. Generally, audio branding was even more successful when the brand name could be sung.
The sonic or audio logo, while not a new development in the advertising world, has seen a recent comeback with brands like Kathmandu, the Australian Open, and even Mumbrella itself making changes to their audio identities in recent months.
According to Dickson, audio branding is about holding the attention, and infiltrating the memory of audiences in a highly saturated attention economy.
Audio is said to speak to the subconscious of a person, much like hypnotherapy. Advertisements are absorbed on a continual basis by the average person, taking place passively and instinctively in the right part of the brain, meaning that advertising that contains music or a sonic logo is much more likely to be easily recalled.
According to research by Ipsos, audio brand assets consistently outperform visual brand assets, even those with video-based ad formats. Moreover, in a study on advertising recall featuring some of Australia’s best known brands, ads containing an audio cue or sonic logo were most likely to be in the top performing third of brand attention.
The SCA Veritonic Audio Logo Index 2021 listed Bunnings and Toyota as the top performing audio brands with BCF, McDonalds and newcomer Menulog also making the top 10.
Alongside melody and wording, the third most important factor for successful audio branding was frequency, as an important step in encoding an audio logo into the memory of consumers.
The biggest issue for brands with audio logos was misattribution, with Dickson reinforcing the importance of using distinct melodies and words to avoid confusion amongst audiences.
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