History of music branding

But what about branded sound? How far back can we actually go in order to find a sound that was logically associated with a “brand” or something that resembled it?

A timeline of music branding

→ 400 AD

As it turns out from research on the Roman Empire, the first branded piece of audio could potentially be associated with Church bells. In fact, in 400 AD, the Roman bishop Paulinus of Nola (a city near Naples, Italy) introduced the use of hand-bells and then regular church bells to call the faithful to prayer. So for centuries now, bells are still associated with the Christianity and going to Mass. And after all, bells do a good job in driving the recognition of the “Christianity brand”.

→ 1800s

Although centuries have passed by, there is no significant trace left of other sounds that could be associated with a specific brand, event or group of people. Until the early 1800s where the haka dance, the New Zealand Māori traditional posture dance, was born. The dance was performed as a battle preparation ritual of warriors. This tradition began with the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team tour and has been carried on by the All Blacks (New Zealand rugby union team) since 1905.

→ 1860s

On April 9, 1860 Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville invented a device called the phonautograph and recorded the song "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit." But he never had any intention of playing it back. He just wanted to study the pattern the sound waves made on a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

Only 17 years later, in 1877, Thomas Edison invented the much more popular phonograph, which could now also playback records.This is the first device for mechanical recording and sound reproduction. Before that, all human musical knowledge had been passed down orally.

→ 1896

In Paris, the Lumière brothers opened the world's first cinema. They rapidly learn that moving visuals without sound is ineffective at retaining viewers' attention. They hired an orchestra to play along with the movies due to a lack of acceptable audio technology. It immediately became a worldwide phenomenon.

→ 1890

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, developed the concept of conditioned reflex. Pavlov predicted that the dogs would salivate in reaction to the food placed in front of them, but he discovered that his dogs began to salivate whenever he heard his assistant's footsteps approaching them with the meal. Pavlov thought he had made a significant scientific breakthrough when he observed that any object or event that the dogs had learnt to link with food would elicit the same response. As a result, he has spent the rest of his career researching this form of learning. This discovery is referred to as Classical Conditioning.

→ 1920

The radio. A powerful one-way communication device that you can listen to, but not answer back. This fits perfectly with the purpose of capitalism. Music was an essential characteristic of advertising back in the 1920s. The first use of music in advertisement dates back to 1926, with General Mills’ Wheaties radio commercial. General Mills had just launched the cereal box on the market two years earlier, but the product wasn’t catching on. GM decided to give a shot to a jingle called “Have you tried Wheaties” written by Earl Gammons (the publicity man of the radio station it first aired on) and performed by a vocal quartet.

Here goes the jingle:

“Have you tried Wheaties? They’re whole wheat with all of the bran. Won’t you try Wheaties? For wheat is the best food of man. They’re crispy and crunchy the whole year through. The kiddies never tire of them and neither will you. So just buy Wheaties, the best breakfast food in the land.”

When the company decided to invest in a nation-wide radio campaign: the sales skyrocketed.

The recall power of music in advertisement became standard especially in the 1930s when Pepsi launched its own jingle on the radio: “Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot”. The spot became so popular that it was a jukebox hit in 1941.

“Pepsi-Cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot / Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.”

The jingle was created by Austen Herbert Croom-John­son and Alan Kent.

→ 1930s

As audiences desired more spoken words and less dancing, the 1930s were a period of enormous innovation for music in cinema. Composers were invited to provide creative music that would complement the piece's drama. This was crucial since the technical demands of filming necessitated the use of highly conservative cameras and studio-bound actors. For the first time, musicians were also given the opportunity to operate independently from the rest of the shoot. The ability to re-record and dub music and spoken lines in an editing suite became available, allowing films to be filmed without the need for an orchestra in the studio or on film.

One of the most famous audio logos for a film production company was in fact recorded in 1928. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer “hired” several different lions throughout the years to perform as main character of their brand. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that spectators began to actually hear the roaring of the lion Before that, the logo was silent.

In the 1940s one of the most famous films of the period was Disney's Fantasia. Mickey Mouse starred in this musical and animation extravaganza. Aside from its cultural significance for combining the best animation with fantastic music, it was also the first picture to have multichannel surround sound, which was recorded using live multitracking. The desire for sound events to follow the characters around the screen led to the development of surround sound, which gave the cinematic experience a new level of realism.

→ 1960s

It was exactly in the year 1960 that Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ shower scene suddenly gave sound to the concept of suspense and fear. The visceral sensation of insecurity and tension that the track conveys is going to be remembered for a long time in our collective memory thanks to the ability to fully describe the moment.

“The use of just strings is a study in restraint, one that perfectly piques the audience’s sense of suspense. The orchestra’s sound is further reduced by the use of the sordino—or “mutes”—on the strings. This sound of muted strings holds back the emotion that a string orchestra would normally have without mutes. The quieter sound matches the tension on screen, starting with the prelude over opening credits and continuing through the love tryst scene that opens the film.The effect is that of a strained voice that wants to scream, but which is held back, frustrated and restrained.”¹

→ 1970s

In 1971 Coca-Cola launches the most expensive ad in history (at that time) called “Hilltop” featuring the renowned jingle “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”. The jingle goes:

It was first released as a radio ad on Feb. 12, 1971, and it gained immediate popularity. DJs immediately began receiving calls asking them to play the jingle, as if it were a song by The Doors or the Jackson 5. It was so popular, it began to affect the pop charts.

Given its popularity, the corporation decided to make a commercial with the jingle, hiring 500 people from Rome to lip-sync the lyrics on a hilltop in Manziana. Backer and his crew were unable to meet their initial budget of $100,000 due to rain and other delays, but the soda business was so confident in his idea that it eventually paid $250,000. The company and its bottlers received more than 100,000 letters about it. ²

It’s generally considered the world’s most popular commercial.

→ 1980s

French radio guru Jean Pierre Baçelon coined the term 'la marque sonique' after archiving, analyzing and categorizing several radio commercials and concluding that ads with sound branding elements gained more recognition, success and sales.

→ 1994

Intel debuts its renowned audio logo, which is today expected to be played every 5 seconds somewhere on the planet. It is also known as the “bong sound”

“Intel’s audio logo is melody driven. It’s simple, but distinctive. Together with the logo, the melody drives home Intel’s brand. The melody instrument itself is hard and sharp. You can hear it most clearly in the last four notes. This gives the audio logo weight, impact and power. A combination of layered sounds could also achieve this same effect – for example a synth, mallet and glockenspiel.”³

The Windows 95 launch tune was composed by ambient pioneer Brian Eno - ironically on a Mac. It's perhaps his most-heard composition to date, despite being only six seconds long.

In the same year, Nokia releases their now-iconic ringtone, which was still monophonic at the time. Not everybody is aware that the short tune is an excerpt from a much longer (though still short) guitar piece by Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega called “Gran Vals”.

→ 2002

The Steven Spielberg's film 'Minority Report' depicts the high-tech future scenario, a world where individualized branding messages are broadcast to pedestrians via directional ultrasonic speakers using facial recognition software. Technology is rapidly approaching maturity toward a dystopian scenario like this one, making the situation of hyper-local aural marketing much more likely. Hyper-personalized audible advertisement can soon become a reality. Are we ready for it?

→ 2003

In 2003 fast-food giant McDonald’s launches its first-ever ad campaign. They pitched the ideas to 14 ad agencies, and after a fair amount of competition they chose to go with a tiny Munich-based firm, Heye & Partner. They came up with a campaign idea called: “I’m lovin’ it”.

“Music was planned to be a big part of the campaign, and so, with the help of the Mona Davis music company, the legendary jingle was born: “ba da ba ba ba”. Although in recent years, Pusha T has claimed to have created the jingle, the actual origin was said to be from one of the backup singers at Mona Davis. However, Pusha T did indeed participate in the music campaign launched by McDonald’s. Most famously, this campaign also included Justin Timberlake’s hit single, “I’m Lovin’ It.” (Mokoena, 2020)

From the mid-2000s onwards, digitization has accelerated the influence of media innovation: we've seen the rise of smartphones, the emergence of social networks, the first voice assistants, and the introduction of music streaming platforms into millions of people's lives. As a result, a chasm has emerged in the previous decade between advertising's content and the public's real engagement with businesses when it comes to products, services, and experiences. Today, sonic branding aims to close this gap by giving consumers more than simply a catchy jingle, but also a powerful emotional charge and a consistent experience throughout a brand's customer journey.

→ 2019

Times are more than mature to introduce to the world one of the most articulated and most marketed sonic identities of all times: Mastercard. It spans across all media, touchpoints, points of sales and even custom singles from artists around the world. The effort to render consistency while delivering cultural relevance in different regions of the world thanks to music adaptations and edits, it’s quite impressive. Mastercard is considered one of the north stars of music branding in recent times.