sonic branding n. the association of a piece of music or a sound with a product, company, or broadcast program. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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Hi Grant
So how about, ” the association of a music and sound with a product, company, or broadcast program.”
Sonic Branding is more than a piece of music or sound that a brand uses in marketing. When really analysed it is everything that the brand stands for in the audio medium. It encapsulates all the values and parameters that a brand uses in visual branding, which is more than a logo or pantone colour. The value of it’s use can be measured so that brands can understand the impact that it has on it’s ROI. If you would like to know and understand more I would be happy to forward you several papers that have been published on the subject. To reduce it to this definition, is not to do it justice. Ruth Simmons
I’ve read papers about it when I worked in advertising and when I was writing this definition. This entry is for people who are not insiders and do not know adspeak or marketing jargon.
What was the first sonic brand and what product or company was it associated with?
A variant of this is assocaition is an “Earcon.”
An “Earcon” is the audio branding signature that is played to identify/reinforce a product. Think of using a pay-phone a few years back and hear “AT&T;… >perdlewing<”, Duracell Batteries “Peern, peern, PEERN” or Intel’s four note cadence. You can take this all the way back to the NBC earcon, though they never called it that, which were the notes G-E-C (picture the peacock) because they were owned by General Electric Corp!
I have recorded Earcons for a variety of companies and it is very interesting how many pick very “retro” sounds. (I don’t complain… if they realize that their earcon sounds “dated” in a year, they come back to me looking for something more “progressive.”