Sonic branding is not just about utilisation but also about utility: Rajeev Raja

The "Tudum" while logging onto netflix is popular worldwide...ever wondered what it was? It's called a mogo aka a musical logo. It's not just a jingle we're talking about here; it's about understanding the thoughts and the personality of the brand. "At a brand level, when you start creating that preference with music, you create brand affinity, you create brand connections and thus the likelihood of the consumer choosing your brand vis-a-vis others becomes higher, " says Rajeev Raja, founder and soundsmith at BrandMusiq. Raja discusses how sonic brand assets positively impact purchase intent for a brand, shares the sound design process and gives us an idea about the mogo creation of Mastercard and Zomato.

Edited excerpts

How do sonic brand assets positively impact purchase intent for a brand?

It helps a brand stand out in the clutter. It helps a brand be clearly recognized so the minute you see the coca-cola lettering for example, over time the positive associations that you know merge with the brand. This is what we call a MOGO® or musical sonic identity. Today, in the world of marketing and media sonic branding has become important because brands need to humanise. There is no better way to do this than through sound through music.

It's not just a jingle we're talking about; it's about understanding the thoughts and the personality of the brand. At a brand level, when you start creating that preference with music, you create brand affinity, you create brand connections and thus the likelihood of the consumer choosing your brand vis-a-vis others becomes higher.

Therefore, it positively affects purchase impact. However, it’s a gradual process; you cannot create a visual identity overnight, It needs media amplification. It needs a strategy of how you're going to get into the ears of your consumers. So, it is a strategic and a long-term value creation. And it should not be seen as, Arrey, jingle banao, Hit banao. That’s not what we are trying to achieve here.

Take me through the design process of creating a sonic identity for a brand?

I come from two different worlds. I've always been a musician, even before I got into advertising. And I play the concert flute. I have my own jazz field. I have my own band. And I kept it going throughout my advertising career where I got very interested in branding and what makes a brand tick. And I think this coming together of the world of brands and music is really where BrandMusiq started. Our first stage is to understand the DNA of a brand. If the brand were a human being, what kind of human being would it be? Would it be a very caring brand? Would it be a very exciting, thrilling brand? This could differ depending on the kind of category you're in. And what are some of the values the brand wants to stand for. More importantly, we have deeply understood the Indian theory of rasas. The artistic endeavour of every Indian artist is to evoke rasas in the audience or key emotions. Sound and music are directly linked to evoking emotions.

Our Indian raga system is very complex and has done this study thousands of years ago. Which is why you have morning ragas, afternoon ragas, evening ragas, which evoke a different palette of emotions. So, once we understand what the brand stands for, the key values of the brand, and more importantly, what kind of emotion do you want to evoke? So, if you're a brand in the motorcycle category, you want to evoke emotions. Maybe you want to evoke the emotions of excitement, thrill, you know, all of that.

While if you're a baby product, you may want to evoke nurturance, care, motherly love. So, once we understand this, we understand what makes this brand unique… Then, we get into the next stage of our process. So, the first stage is something we call brand discovery.

What happens after brand discovery?

We do brand sonic mapping. Let's take the SUV category for example. The brand in this category gives the vibe of being exciting and thrilling plus it wants to be outdoors and appeal to a younger audience. Now, we know what kinds of instruments we should use, what kind of beats per minute we should start at. If we are talking about very active outdoorsy kind of brand, and keeping the target audience in mind, we may bring in some rock guitar or some EDM elements which the younger generation is listening to. The audience immediately gets attracted to that kind of sound. And this is one stage of the sonic design process or the sonic mapping process. The other stage is actually to start layering it with different kinds of instrumentation and a melody. That very clearly reflects the ethos and values of the brand. The entire thing at this stage is called a sonic mood board. Within that, there will be something we embed, which is the hook or the refrain, which is called the MOGO® or musical logo.

Can you share some examples?

When we created the global sonic identity for MasterCard, you will hear the MOGO® at the end of the communication. We even created a mini MOGO®, which was for 1.2 seconds. So, it's a 1.5 second version for the digital media, for apps, notifications, alerts, and that goes something like toot, toot, toot, toot, toot. The mogo for Zomato expresses speed of delivery and also tells you where the rider is. Therefore, it's not just about brand recognition but also about brand utility.

So, the purpose of this sonic mapping workshop is to play something which may represent the avatar rasa. Here, the client sees the logic of why we have chosen certain pieces of music, instrumentation, tempos, and a specific melody. During the second stage - the sonic mapping we get client feedback. The client may point out that they do not want death metal or big drums as they find it too aggressive for the mogo.

We take all this feedback back and compose the MOGOSCAPE® which is like the sonic palette or sonic anthem of the brand. At this stage, we do not put lyrics If we use human voices, we use them only as instruments. And within this MOGOSCAPE® , there would be the MOGO®. And once the MOGOSCAPE® and MOGO® are approved, we create a mini MOGO® version of it. Once the MOGOSCAPE®, MOGO®, and mini MOGO® are finalised, that's when we do what we call an amplification and media mapping.