I’m sure all of us can recall brands that have used sound effectively for branding. The Intel bong, McDonald’s ‘I’m loving it’, 20th Century Fox music, the Nokia tune and so many others have unconsciously and insidiously created brand associations in our mind.
Sound can be a powerful branding device. When done right, it can bypass rational evaluation systems to create emotional associations that don’t require thought to be brought to the surface.
As more interactions with brands shifts from visual to voice through automated customer service systems, devices such as Google Home or Echo the concept of sound in branding takes another turn – that of finding a specific voice for our brand. Preferably one that sounds more human than synthetic since we would all rather talk to people than machines.
In Part 2 of our series, we are excited to share this piece about a new San Francisco based startup – Voicery that is using machine learning to create more human, less synthetic voices. Their website has a fun test – do try it to see if you can distinguish between a human and a machine voice. I got it right only 72% of the time!
https://www.fastcompany.com/90166206/the-future-of-branding-synthetic-voices-that-sound-100-human