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Last week, we teamed up with the brilliant crew at Molecular Sound for an evening we'd been looking forward to for a while:
An Intro to Sonic Branding, hosted at their Hoxton studio.
The big takeaway? Sound is one of the most powerful brand assets you have... and most brands aren't using it nearly enough.
When we think about branding, we tend to picture logos, typography, colour palettes and tone of voice.
But your brand has a sonic identity too.
Think sonic logos, voiceovers, UI sounds, even the little audio cues people interact with in your product.
They're all shaping how people experience your brand, whether you've designed them intentionally or not.
Those moments show up everywhere. Social content, podcasts, events, apps, streaming platforms, in-store experiences - even your hold music.
Every touchpoint is another chance to sound like your brand.
One of the things that really stuck with us was why this matters.
Sound taps into emotion in a way visuals often can't.
It helps people feel something before they've even processed what they're looking at.
That emotional connection drives recognition, recall and preference - making sonic branding one of the strongest performing brand assets you can invest in.
It also travels surprisingly well.
A consistent sonic identity can communicate your brand across languages, cultures and markets without needing a single word.
One of our favourite moments of the evening was the brand recognition quiz, which proved just how deeply these sounds are wired into our brains.
The answer that got the biggest reaction?
One of the earliest examples of sonic branding wasn't a company at all - it was the church bell.
Humans have been using sound to signal, gather communities and create associations for centuries.
We've only recently started calling it branding.
After the workshop came drinks, plenty of good conversations, and a DJ set from Radio.Rita to round out the evening.
The best kind of event: one that quietly changes the way you think about something you'd never really questioned before.
Huge thanks to the team at Molecular Sound for having us!
If you're curious about what great sonic branding looks (or rather, sounds) like in practice, their work with Huel is well worth a watch.
It's a great example of how a thoughtful sonic identity can become just as recognisable as a visual one.
