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The other morning on my way to work, I had a song stuck in my head while I was on the subway. Don’t you just hate that? It was a little peppy melody that was really familiar but I couldn’t quite place it because it was so specific. By the time I got to my stop a picture had formed in my head that went with the a cappella music: a changing landscape, fields of flowers and waterfalls, but made up of people in acrobatic movement—and then, alas, a Prius moving through. It took under ten minutes for me to put all the pieces together, and when I did I remembered, of course, how much I love, love, love, their current campaign. Unaided and positive brand interaction during my morning commute, and I didn’t even need to see an actual Prius to think about how much I love them. Score one for Toyota.

When we talk to our clients about “look and feel” we typically mean typography, color palette, photography style, and how those elements extend into their communications and touch points. When we’re really lucky we get to talk about a brand voice: it’s not only what you say but how you say it that makes something on brand.

The brands that are really standing out to me these days have taken “look and feel” to a really interesting level: what they sound like. Go YouTube some commercials from Apple and Target and you will know what I mean by this.

It’s not that they are simply using catchy music to tell a 30-second story.  It’s not sonic branding like the Intel jingle. Those are nothing new to us, though they are incredibly useful. But the really savvy brands are beginning to own very specific musical styles so their spots always sound “on brand” no matter what song is used. Would Target’s use of “Hello Goodbye” been as effective using the Beatles version in their "Good buy" campaign, or did it work on a deeper level because their cover sounded like Target to me?

Music is one of the most powerful forms of sense memory, and one that is easily ignored by those of us who work in mostly verbal and visual terms. But as we are challenged more and more to think about how a brand “feels” to customers as they experience it, we would all be smart to ask ourselves, “and what would that sound like?”