What is a Brand Anthem, Prosody in Sonic Branding, & Why Your Business Needs an Anthem

You are sitting in a movie theater. The lights are dimmed, the trailers are over and the Nicole Kidman pre-roll ad at this AMC just finished reminding you why we go to the movies. The screen is black with the buttery smell of popcorn filling the air. On a black screen, the words “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away…” appear. Suddenly we hear a large orchestra demanding your attention as the black and yellow “Star Wars” logo appears on screen and at this moment you know exactly what you are in for. The opening title crawl continues, while the music goes from a bombastic orchestra to a tender love theme and back to the main theme.

Why is this so powerful and what can brands learn from this?

Jingles and underscores are great, but if you really want to own your identity - you’ll need a brand anthem. Without one, you are missing a huge opportunity to connect with customers and get the most emotional impact out of your messaging.

You can think of a brand anthem the same way you may think of other popular anthems - such as a national anthem or movie title. This piece of music is a total encapsulation of your brand aurally and tells a complete emotional story about your brand. National Anthems elicit strong responses from the citizens of the country, and often with only a few notes needing to be recognized.

Think about the opening notes of The Star Spangled Banner, “Oh say can you see?”, or the first few notes of the Canadian Anthem, “O Canada”. All that is needed to trigger a response is the opening bar and listeners instantly connect it with all their patriotic memories associated with the country, as well as the many other times they may have heard it - such as baseball games or national celebrations.

For maximum emotional impact, the brand anthem should be the centerpiece of your sonic identity - jingles, sonic logos, underscores and such should all stem from the aesthetic created here. Think of your brand like a big budget Hollywood production - movie franchises are also brands in their own right. If you took the main title to a movie like Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Jaws and moved it to somewhere else int he film, would it still fit the proper sound aesthetic? These main themes in Hollywood movies are often conceived as a starting point for composing the rest of the score - with a lot of the score drawing on the instrumentation, textures, and harmonies/melodies present here - which is why it is so important to absolutely nail the main theme so any music derived from it has the same sonic DNA.

It’s no coincidence that a brand anthem and a movie score have a lot of similarities- the goal with sonic branding is to score the brand experience. This often means treating a brand very much like a movie score and finding the sound elements that will bring it to life and convey the proper emotional elements much like a movie would. The famous light saber sound is really cool and works well in Star Wars, but if you were to use it for the sword fighting in the movie Gladiator, it would feel very out of place. What we are striving for is a sense of prosody, or “the appropriate relationship between elements, whatever they may be”.

What does this mean in terms of a brand anthem? Well, your brand anthem needs to capture the heart, story, and essence of your brand. If you are an outdoorsy brand like a chain that sells hiking gear, the music should be in line with that and incorporate sounds frequently associated with that sub culture. For example, incorporating the sounds of nature in a brand anthem would be totally in line and support the aesthetic of the brand, where as industrial metal would be way less likely to. The industrial metal could be cool, but it wouldn’t be in line with the rest of the brand values and would actually work against the intended message.

This is why prosody in your brand anthem is so important: All elements of the brand identity must work in conjunction with one another to create a whole equal than the sum of it’s parts. This is why when we craft a brand anthem, it is super important to fully understand a brand, it’s story, and the nuances of the emotional value it creates for it’s customers. It is not just about creating a piece of music, but rather creating a score, or even better, creating a brand experience.

When we do this process at Electric Raindrop, we have a large in depth discussion about your brand, it’s relationship with sound and music, and perform an audit of your history here. We then create multi-media mood boards that contain as much as possible about the brand experience we are trying to create. These can contain anything from audio, to pictures, quotes, videos, and more. The goal is for us to really dial in the emotional qualities in your brand and dial in a series of super descriptive briefs for potential brand anthems. We then take this briefs and demo and refine the music until we feel it perfectly captures your brand. This then becomes a resource we can derive further sonic logos, jingles, underscore and more from. It can be thought of as a sonic demonstration in your “style guide” if you are familiar with this idea in visual branding as well.

Sonic logos and jingles are both great to have, but to really maximize their emotional potential - a brand anthem is essential. These two elements don’t tell the full brand story but when paired with and stemming from an anthem they can be quick reminders of everything a brand stands for in just a couple of notes. Like the opening notes to the National Anthem or Star Wars, it will be all you need to instantly connect with your audience on an emotional level.

If you are interested in having a brand anthem or sonic identity created for your company, contact us today!