Elevating Your Brand's Sound: The Rise of Custom Music

While stock music has been a commonly used resource for many advertisers, a shift towards custom music has gained momentum, driven by the unique value it brings to brands. This shift that we’re continuing to see towards customized music production has been driven in large part by a desire for a well developed sonic or audio brand identity, that is able to deliver originality, uniqueness, enhanced storytelling, and ownability for the brand. In this blog post, we will explore 3 main reasons why custom music holds a distinct advantage over stock music in advertising.

1) Brand Identity & Recall

Brands seeking to provide a distinct memorable experience for their customers recognize the limitations of stock music, given it is often overused and available to a wide range of users. Customized music has the ability to be crafted to align seamlessly with a brand’s identity and message, contributing to a more memorable and impactful experience. This alignment strengthens brand recognition and helps differentiate the brand in a crowded marketplace. Research shows the use of music consistent with a brand’s identity can increase recall by up to 96%.

2) Emotional Resonance & Brand-to-Customer Connections

Engaging customers on an emotional level has widely acknowledged benefits in advertising. Through the strategic use of sound and custom music production, brands can harness critical defining emotions or sentiments to create meaningful and compelling content. Used properly, music provides the emotional clarity needed for viewers to form lasting connections with brands. The interplay and intentional use of melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, instrumentation, cultural influences, silence, lyrics and vocals, and more all impact the emotional responses you’re looking to elicit.

3) Differentiation

The rise of streaming services and the common use of stock music in advertising has led to an audio experience for consumers that has a lot of repetition and similarities across different brands. Custom music breaks away from this generic use of sound, allowing businesses to be pioneers in shaping their sonic brand identity. Custom music allows for the creation of unique and ownable music assets that fit within a brands image, including:

• Bespoke musical compositions, tailored to enhance the storytelling and themes of the creative content
• Brand Anthems, specifically created to embody the essence, values and personality of a brand
• Audio logos or sonic logos, crafted to be a short auditory representation that creates instant recognition and reinforces brand identity
• Various musical adaptations and versioning (or remixing) for a more tailored experience targeted to client specific customer segments, markets, cultures, etc.

Custom Music & Sonic Branding Case Study

Take a look at some of our recent work for PENN Entertainment, where we had the opportunity to deliver on all 4 of these elements (custom music, brand anthem, sonic logo & 4 adaptations), for their PENN Play "Well Played" integrated campaign.

Sonic Signature / Sonic Logo:

View the full case study and all 4 anthem adaptations here: PENN Entertainment

Results:

With a strategic approach and a team of global creatives, we achieved remarkable results.

PENN Play’s launch and first month has exceeded historical performance. It has also impressed customers, boosting organic followers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. It’s driven new registrations and is increasing downloads of the app. And it’s given PENN Entertainment the connective tissue needed to strengthen the corporate brand and portfolio as it continues to build capabilities and acquire new offerings and customers.

The campaign won a Silver at the 2023 W3 Awards in the Integrated Campaigns category.

• +15% web visits
• +55% app downloads
• +20% app active users
• +15% social media interactions

Conclusion

While stock music might seem like a cost-effective option initially, the long-term benefits of custom music in terms of brand differentiation, emotional engagement, and ROI outweigh the initial investment.

In an era where audio advertising is leading in results, a unique musical signature can set a brand apart from competitors and create a lasting impression in the minds of consumers. Businesses that prioritize custom music and the creation of a bespoke branded sound experience position themselves as forward-thinking and attentive to their customers’ holistic experience, forging lasting consumer relationships.