Brands now have sound and motion

For a long time, brand identity was understood as something you see: logo, colors, typography, imagery. A complete identity meant a complete set of files. But the environment a brand lives in has changed fundamentally. People listen to podcasts while driving, watch short videos with headphones on, and interact with apps through their fingertips. A brand is no longer only seen. It is heard, felt through motion, and in some cases, touched. A static logo on a small screen is only a small part of that whole experience.

The multisensory identity mechanism

Brand identity works through associative memory. Each time a specific cue appears, the brain activates the network of associations tied to that brand. Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford, has documented over several decades that the senses do not operate independently. Sound changes how we perceive images, and images change how we hear. A brand that consistently combines cues from several senses creates associations that are more durable and run deeper. Those associations are also harder to erase than the ones a purely visual brand builds.

In Building Distinctive Brand Assets, Jenni Romaniuk measures distinctive assets along two axes: how widely known they are in the market, and how uniquely they are linked to the brand. This principle applies to every kind of asset, not just imagery. A distinctive sound, a signature style of motion, or the feel of an app's feedback can all be measured within the same framework. They can all be built, or wasted, in the same way.

Brand sound: a forgotten asset

Sonic branding (sound identity) covers everything a brand emits: background music in videos, notification sounds in apps, voiceover in ads, phone hold music. At a higher level of investment, there is also an audio logo, a short sound mark the listener recognizes instantly. What sets sonic branding apart from simply picking background music is intention and consistency. Not every good-sounding track suits a brand. Just as not every blue can stand in for Tiffany blue.

Mastercard has invested in building a global sound system for its brand since 2019. The system consists of a core melody, adapted for each market, music genre and context of use, from point-of-sale payments to television ads. It does not replace the visual identity. It runs alongside it, and the two reinforce each other. When users see the logo, they almost hear the melody in their heads. That is an associative asset.

A brand is not a logo. A brand is the feeling in the gut of customers about a product, service, or organization.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

Motion: personality made visible

Motion design is not a skill added after the identity system is complete. In the digital environment, movement is how a brand behaves, not just how it looks. When an app interface responds to a touch, when a logo appears on an introduction screen, when a notification slides into view. Each of those moments is an opportunity to express personality or to contradict it.

A brand that positions itself as trustworthy, stable and enduring will use slow, weighty motion with clear inertia. A brand that positions itself as agile and youthful will use short, decisive, high-energy motion. No motion is technically right or wrong, but some motion fits a given brand and some does not. If the brand personality says one thing and the motion says another, users feel a dissonance, even when they cannot name the feeling.

Touch and non-screen environments

For physical brands, packaging, spaces and surfaces also communicate through the user's hands. The weight of a box, the matte or glossy finish of paper, the click of a bottle cap are all identity signals, even if no one writes them into the brand guidelines. Premium brands have understood this for a long time. The difference between opening an ordinary phone box and opening an iPhone box is not only in the materials. It is a whole sequence of sensations designed on purpose, from the resistance of the lid to the order in which each accessory appears.

For a service brand, non-screen environments might be the sound at the point of sale, the scent in the reception space, or the quality of the paper that documents are printed on. Not all of these elements need to be designed from the very start of building the brand. But you do need to be aware that the brand still happens here, whether it is designed or not.

Starting from where it is practical

Not every brand needs a complete sonic system or dozens of pages of motion guidelines from the start. A practical starting point is to take inventory: in what environments does your brand exist beyond static images? Videos? Apps? Physical spaces? Sound advertisements? In each of those environments, what decisions are being made about sound and movement, and who is making those decisions, based on what criteria?

If the answer is "everyone does their own thing as they please," the brand is accumulating identity debt, not saving on design costs. Each video uses different background music, each app uses animation at a different speed, each touchpoint uses a different motion language. The result is that customers have no way to build a lasting association with the brand, however often they encounter it. Exposure without consistency does not become recognition. It is just noise.

Distinctive assets only create mental availability when repeated consistently. Consistency is not about aesthetics, but about memory mechanisms.

Jenni Romaniuk, Building Distinctive Brand Assets (2018)

A strong brand is one whose assets are put to work, not one that simply has many assets. Sound, motion and the other senses do not replace the visual foundation. But when built with intention and consistency, they turn every touchpoint into a chance to reinforce, once more, what the brand wants people to remember.