Close your eyes. You’ll still know which brand this is.
Most companies already have one. Almost none decided what it should say.
Sonic branding is the deliberate use of sound to do a logo’s job: make a brand recognisable without being seen. Most companies already have one. Almost none decided what it should say. If you can identify a brand from two beats of sound with your eyes closed, that brand made a choice it never wrote down as a choice.
Most brand guidelines stop at what’s visible. A logo, a palette, a type system, maybe a tone of voice. Sound gets bolted on later, by whoever’s finishing the video, and becomes part of the brand the moment it’s repeated enough, whether anyone meant it to or not.
Ipsos analysed 2,015 pieces of video creative and found that audio appeared in under 10% of cases, the least-used brand asset in the study. Yet creative using audio was 3.44 times more likely to land in the high-performing tier, rising to 8.53 times when the audio carried a specific sonic brand cue (Ipsos Views, The Power of You, February 2020). The brands that get sound right didn’t stumble into it. They made the same call in audio that they’d already made everywhere else.
Netflix decided what it wasn’t, in under a second.
When Netflix set out to build its sonic logo, the goal wasn’t simply memorability. The team wanted something distinctive enough to belong to Netflix and work across the different kinds of stories on the platform. According to Twenty Thousand Hertz’s 2020 episode with Netflix VP of Product Todd Yellin and sound designers Lon Bender and Charlie Campagna, the final “ta-dum” was built from surprisingly ordinary sounds.
The team tested multiple options before landing on the sound that people associated most strongly with movies and drama. The result is less like a notification that you’ve opened Netflix and more like a signal that a story is about to begin.
That’s what makes the sound work. It isn’t trying to describe Netflix. It’s creating a feeling that belongs to Netflix.
McDonald’s stopped changing its mind.
The five-note “I’m Lovin’ It” mnemonic has barely changed since 2003, over two decades in an industry where campaigns, visual identities and creative platforms are constantly refreshed. What’s notable isn’t the melody. It’s restraint. Across agencies, leadership changes and global campaigns, McDonald’s has kept one of its most recognisable assets intact while everything around it evolves. That consistency is the point. A sonic identity doesn’t become recognisable because it is brilliant once. It becomes recognisable because it is repeated until the brain no longer needs the brand name. The strongest sonic assets behave like logos. You don’t redesign them every campaign. You build recognition around them.
Mastercard didn’t add sound. It replaced something that disappeared.
Mastercard is the clearest case of the three because its sonic identity wasn’t built simply to decorate advertising. As payments went digital, customers lost the small physical signals that once confirmed a transaction had worked: the swipe, the printed receipt, the beep at the till. Those cues weren’t decoration. They were proof.
Mastercard designed a multisensory identity that could bring some of that reassurance back into digital transactions. Today, its Checkout Sound and Animation experience is preferred by 78% of consumers shopping through digital and in-store channels. Mastercard also says the combination delivers 3.4 times stronger assurance around safety, trust and acceptance. Those figures come from Mastercard-commissioned research, and the distinction matters: this isn’t simply a sound being added to a checkout. It is sound being used as part of the experience itself. That’s the part every founder and product team can actually act on. Not “get a sonic logo.” Find where your product removed a physical or visual cue, and ask whether you replaced it with anything that reassures the customer.
A confirmation sound after payment. A notification that signals something important happened. A sound that tells you an action succeeded. A moment that makes a digital interaction feel complete. Sound gets interesting when it stops being decoration and starts doing a job.
A simple test for your own brand
Play your notification sound, your hold music and your payment confirmation tone back to back.
Then ask someone who’s never dealt with your company one question: Do these sound like they belong to the same brand?
If the answer is no, you don’t necessarily have a sound problem. You have a brand decision you haven’t made yet. We use the same competitor test for taglines. The same applies to sound. Every brand already has a sonic identity. The only choice left is whether it’s a strategy or an accident that got repeated often enough to stick.
Frequently asked questions
What is sonic branding?
The deliberate use of sound to do the job a logo or tagline does: make a brand recognisable without being seen.
Do we need a jingle to have a sonic identity?
No. Most companies already have sounds customers hear every day: notification tones, payment confirmations, IVR hold music, app sounds and transaction cues. The opportunity isn’t necessarily creating something new. It’s deciding what those sounds should say about the brand.
Where should a sonic identity show up first?
Start where a digital experience has replaced a physical one. Checkout confirmations, app notifications, onboarding and anywhere a receipt, handshake or face-to-face moment used to exist and now doesn’t.
How often should a sonic identity change?
Rarely. Like a logo or a brand colour, a sonic identity gets stronger through consistency. Repetition builds recognition. Reinvention resets it.
Brand imagery remains the property of the respective brands and agencies, shown here as editorial reference with credit.