Imagine a commercial with music so alluring and contemporary that it draws thousands of YouTube visitors within weeks with comments like “can you tell me from where i can download the song please?” and “it’s really awesome!!!”. It must have used a hit song or a track from a new artist with Record Company marketing clout, and it probably cost tens of thousands of dollars to licence, right? Listen for yourself…

In reality this track chosen for the new Canon commercial (”Blackbird Song” by Ben Cocks) was from a production music library. The truth is that it was significantly less expensive for our client than a hit song would have been. And the song’s production quality and “catchiness” is on par, if not ahead of, most higher-profile tracks out there. Read more…

So which tv Christmas commercial most holds a special place in your heart? At soundlounge, we have created a list of our own personal selection. Let us know if we have left out your favourite…

1. Coca Cola (Holidays Are Coming)
2. John Lewis (From Me To You)
3. M&S ( This Party Started)
4.Budweiser (Horses)
5. Coca Cola (Polar Bears)
6. Irn Bru (Walking In The Air)
7. M&S (Most Wonderful Time Of The Year)
8. Heineken (Let It Snow)
9. Kellogg’s
10. Lucky Strike

In sonic branding, much thought and effort goes into finding the perfect sounds to fit a brand’s style. Part of this process involves breaking these sounds into their essential ingredients and critiquing them: “That trumpet is a shade too mellow. Can we find one with more punch?” or “We need to decide if we want a brighter voice or a darker voice.”

Every musical detail counts in the advertising world. Think of the Intel Inside sound, one of the most memorable audio logos of all time – only three seconds long. Creator Walter Werzowa needed a keen ear to carefully design each sound. In the first note alone, he used over 20 different instruments and sounds!

Listen to the Intel sonic logo

Did you hear the anvil, tambourine, and electric spark? If you’re like most listeners, probably not (we’ll get to the reason for this later). But Werzowa hand-picked each of these sounds for a reason. He knew their unique sound “flavours” and was able to mix them perfectly into a memorable audio logo.

We can all tell when an instrument sounds right or wrong in a certain context. This is the “I’ll know it when I hear it” approach, which drives many sound branding decisions. But when it comes down to a few seconds of sound design, it’s important to understand why an instrument sounds mellow, punchy, bright, or dark.

With a little science and an open ear, we’ll explore some of the basic “spices” of sound undiscovered by the average listener – overtones.

Can you sing more than one note at the same time?

Tuvan musician Kongar-ol Ondar employs an age-old Tuvan tradition of overtone singing to sing two, three, or four notes at the same time in this clip from the Late Show with David Letterman:

“How did he do that?!” you might be thinking. Let’s take a closer look at overtones – Read more…

It was designed to remind advertisers of the continuing influence and effectiveness of television but in fact served to highlight the remarkable power of sound branding. Thinkbox, the television marketing body for major UK commercial broadcasters, recently unveiled its very first TV advert featuring a man on a psychiatrist’s couch who is prompted to go to a “happy place” in his mind. Far from imagining a sandy beach or flower-filled meadow the patient blurts out a series of famous jingles from the last 30 years. Among the slogans are Just One Cornetto, immortally sung to Italy’s O Sole Mio, the beautifully harmonised Mild Green…Fairy Liquid and of course, the unforgettable WOAH!! Bodyform.

The Thinkbox ad has received mixed reviews, with a post on one forum claiming it “shows our minds are full of the most worthless garbage serving no function or purpose other than to drive us absolutely insane”. But for many, it provides a nostalgic, 60-second trip down memory lane. As Thinkbox says, it’s the sort of commercial that starts conversations about TV ads – which ones we like best and why we remember them above other types of advertising. So why are these jingles so memorable, so effortlessly able, decades on, to allows us not only to recall a particular time in our lives but an individual product? Read more…

We all know that brands love music but if they are to use sound to emotionally engage with consumers then understanding exactly how it affects them has to be at the very heart of sound branding. While great luminaries like Dr Daniel Levitin – Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Neuroscience and author of the groundbreaking This is Your Brain on Music – have been considering this on an intellectual level for many years, agencies still appear to be dragging their heels when it comes to putting a science to the art of sound branding. But last week, Levitin’s scientific paper Life Soundtrack (commissioned by Philips Consumer Electronics in 2007) re-emerged in the somewhat unlikely format of an article in Men’s Health Magazine. According to the report, music affects the human brain in a huge variety of ways, allowing us to utilise certain types or genres of music to help complete different tasks. This is supported by consumer analysis carried out by Entertainment Media Research (EMR) which found that an impressive 82 per cent of us use music to boost our spirits. It also revealed that 75 per cent of people use music when they are engaged in a physical activity from housework to the gym and even sex! Read more…

In the summer of 2007, dance duo Groove Armada sent shockwaves through the music production industry by opting out of a deal with a traditional record label. In April 2008, the duo, who have become a household name thanks in part to the use of their music in commercials, instead signed-up with Bacardi making them the first mainstream group to turn to a major brand for investment. Considering the majority of digital music is downloaded for free, through the expansive networks of user to user file shares – it is not difficult to imagine that as record companies’ profits suffer amid the current economic squeeze, the emerging trend of band-brand partnerships will continue to develop.

The one-year deal has sparked a mixed reaction from fans. Although the majority are in support of the partnership and feel the pair is a good brand fit, some have expressed surprise that the group would choose to associate so freely with such a major commercial corporation. But speaking to the BBC, the band’s Andy Cato defended the move. “You’ve always needed big business to get your music out there,” he explained. “That help used to be major record labels, now it’s all kinds of different things. If you say one corporate pound is any more or less corporate than another, then you’re wrong,” he added. “What is a record label if it’s not a commercial brand?” So how long will it take for other global brands to become the major investing foundation of the music industry? In some ways the ball has already started rolling. Read more…

The day of reckoning has finally arrived. Today, the much-lauded Barack Obama brand machine, which has been working around the clock to inspire and influence a global audience, will finally stand up and be counted. And so far, so good, with recent figures from CBS and the New York Times suggesting that 80 per cent of Americans feel positive about the next four years under the former Illinois senator. But while few would cast doubt on Obama’s personal sentiment during his stirring speeches, his success is by no means one solely of his own making.

Like all politicians, Obama has marketed himself to the max and earlier this week uniquely demonstrated the invaluable impact of a relatively new kind of branding. This technique uses music to represent a brand’s core beliefs and values – it’s about finding the sound of the brand. While we are all exposed to music in commercials on a regular basis, Sunday’s We Are One concert held at Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial, was a first-class demonstration of the importance of music branding on a different scale. The event proved to those in attendance and indeed, the rest of the world, how sound can not only trigger strong emotions but target any number of different groups and simultaneously unite them.

So what is the “Sound of Obama”? Read more…

Photo by Paste Magazine

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood, is a tale of a misanthropic oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in California at the turn of the last century. Underscoring this powerful film, is a soundtrack composed by Radiohead’s, Jonny Greenwood. The music is often abrasive, dissonant, disturbing and always very loud. Though it’s not widely known, Greenwood is not new to orchestration, having completed one film score before (for an experimental documentary called ‘Bodysong’), in addition to being commissioned by the BBC to compose a piece called ‘Popcorn Superhet Receiver’, which is excerpted in TWBB and helped get him this commission. Along with Greenwood’s score there are selections from the works of Arvo Part, as well as Johannes Brahms’ ‘Concerto in D Major’.
Read more…

It would seem that choosing the perfect music for a commercial is such a rare and special occasion, that we almost speak in reverent, hushed tones when we discuss its success. But with at least £40million being invested in copyright music a year in the UK alone for commercials (which works out at roughly 15,000 ideas that are executed), it would not be unreasonable to ask why so many ideas fall into anonymity, neutrality and are just plain uninspiring. Music & image partnerships such like Leftfield & Guinness, Dvorak & Hovis, or any of the of Waitrose tracks that genuinely and consistently reflect its quality and values, and should give us the foundations to learn.

Another exceptional partnership is the much-feted winner of this year’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix, ‘Gorilla’, created by Juan Cabral at Fallon. ‘Gorilla’ has become the most successful campaign in recent years, with over 10 million hits on YouTube and 93,000 references on Google. With so many devotees, what is it about this particular film that has us all so captivated and spellbound? Read more…