Audio Branding
If you read "Duh dum" and then read "Netflix", you hear a sound, right?
Audio branding is something that has fascinated me ever since I noticed just how memorable the sound at the end of a downloaded TikTok video is. When a TikTok video ends, the company’s logo pops up with a 1 or 2 second long sound that plays. This is called a ‘sonic logo’, which is similar to a jingle, but shorter (and less annoying). It’s quick and punchy, and a way for companies to represent themselves and their brand to their audience in memorable way. You might think that two seconds isn’t nearly enough time to do all of that, but let’s listen to TikTok’s sonic logo as an example.
After experimenting with hundreds of different motifs and ideas, TikTok and Massive Music (the company that created the sonic logo) settled on this sound that – if you’ve watched a short video online in the last three years or so – you’ve probably already heard before. The sound is a combination of factors that represent the company in distinct ways1:
The 808 boom – used to represent TikTok’s musicality and pay homage to the history of the app as a music sharing platform, which also works as a divider between the music used in a video and the logo itself. It distinctly signifies the end of a video.
The E Major seven chord - when the company first ventured into creating a sonic identity, TikTok was aiming to move away from being categorised as an app that caters exclusively to a younger audience. For a period, the logo was going to make use of a marimba playing a simple E Major chord (think airport “dun, dun, dun), to reflect the company’s ethos of being a happy and fun place on the internet. But after some focus group testing, they found the E Major chord to be perceived as child-like, whereas the E Major seven was found to be more appealing and also more easily recalled.
The dog bark – this one isn’t very obvious, but is probably my favourite feature of the logo. Tucked beneath the chord is the sound of a dog barking that was pulled from a user-generated TikTok video. This to me feels sentimental in a way, representing how the users make the app what it is.
The result is a sound that I personally really enjoy and look forward to hearing at the end of a TikTok video sent to me by a friend or shared to someone’s Instagram story. Netflix and HBO also have sonic logos that I think are really well done. They quickly set the tone for what you’re about to experience while simultaneously representing the brand.
This is a video made by the creators of TikTok’s sonic logo that walks through how they made the sound.