Audio Branding

“All news music doesn't have to have trumpets and trombones, and all trains don't have to just ring, you know, or honk. And all appliances shouldn't always sound like ‘beep beep beep,’ you know, chip sounds instead of having a tune that would make people remember them better and maybe like them better.” -- Colleen Fahey

This week’s guest is a creative executive with deep experience in branding and marketing at multiple touchpoints. When she learned of Sixième Son, a sonic branding agency that had created over four hundred brands, she approached them about expanding to North America. She opened a sonic branding agency in Chicago at the end of 2012 and, in 2017, co-authored the book Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand. Since those days, her team has led Sixième Son's sonic branding initiatives for Atlanta, Michelin, Huggies, Merrell Footwear, USAA Insurance, Sparkling Ice drinks, a hospital, a news network, an AIDS treatment, and many more. The North American business now operates out of New York, Toronto, and Cleveland, as well as Chicago. Throughout her career, she's been a creative director for leading brands in the US, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Raised in Madrid, she speaks fluent Spanish, conversational French, and a courageous-but-embarrassing Portuguese.

Her name is Colleen Fahey, and if you’ve always wanted to ask questions about audio branding from one of the oldest premier companies in the business, you’ll want to hear this interview. I have no doubt Colleen will blow our minds with her observations about the audio branding landscape.

As always, if you have any questions for my guest, you’re welcome to reach out through the links in the show notes. If you have questions for me, just visit www.audiobrandingpodcast.com where you’ll find all sorts of ways to get in touch. Plus, subscribing to the newsletter (on the www.audiobrandingpodcast.com webpage) will let you know when the new podcasts are available. And if you’d consider it, I’d love to hear what you think of the podcast! You can leave a review (that I’d love to feature on future podcasts!), either in written or in voice format from the podcast’s main page.

An Elegant Idea

The episode begins with Colleen’s earliest memories of sound: she tells us about leaving the U.S. at the age of four to live in Spain, and how the sound of the ocean liner’s horn as they departed literally shook her from head to toe. “It somehow also got into my psyche too,” she tells us, “because it was almost like a book had closed with that sound.” We then talk about a pivotal moment in 2011 when she first learned about sonic branding, as she attended the Audio Branding Congress at Columbia University. “I was struck by how elegant the idea was that these people were so excited about,” Colleen explains, “how elegant the idea of having a sound that repped the brand from every angle.”

The Value of Your Brand

Next Colleen tells us about writing her first book, and the importance of, as she puts it, “an audio brand that fits your brand, that communicates your values, that gets attention and really becomes a brand asset that lasts for years.” We talk about the power of early audio marketing in transforming Hawaii from a little-known territory into a tourist destination, and about avoiding the cliches and sonic codes that commercials have created. “A brand needs to stand out,” she says, “be recognized and differentiate, and the music has to help you differentiate in a way that's appropriate to the value of the brand.”

Using Your Ears

We go on to talk about mood boards, what exactly they are, and how they helped inspire her team at Sixième Son while creating a sonic brand for Atlanta’s tourism board. “The music,” she recalls about one brainstorming session, “instead of coming together, was layered. Everyone sounded good, but they didn't sound like they were all playing the same thing, and that was just a big a-ha moment.” There’s inspiration all around us, she explains, and she tells us about the importance of listening for it and keeping our ears open. “I'm talking about people having to really sit and use their ears,” she says. “Everyone loves doing it, and they're amazed at how exhausted they are at the end.”

Hearing Without Listening

“The thing that an audio brand can do,” Colleen tells us, “is access people at a very immediate level, and almost without their knowing that they're being influenced.” We talk about audio cues and sonic logos that have become an almost invisible part of our lives, and how brands have replaced intrusive advertising with a more subtle and widespread presence. As we close the first half of...

Judy Rodman has spent over 50 years in the music industry. She’s been a top session singer, recording artist, stage and TV performer, songwriter, studio producer, public speaker, and coach. Judy teaches singers and speakers globally both from her office and online. She’s a published author, hosts the podcast All Things Vocal, and is currently working on a 12-module course in vocal training.

In the first part of our conversation, we spoke about a variety of topics, including:

• How Nashville is doing amidst the COVID-19 shutdowns (during which time this episode was recorded)
• Judy’s recommendations for how Nashvillians can proactively live through the challenges of the circumstances surrounding COVID-19
• How Judy first developed a love for voice
• Judy’s background in music growing up
• Judy’s first paid gig
• How Judy transitioned into being a vocal coach
• Recording jingles as a staff member of the Pepper Tanner organization
• Making up copy for a funeral home
• How Judy started doing work writing longer copy
• How taking voice lessons and learning to sing helps songwriters
• The importance of silence and pauses when reading copy
• The one question we have to ask ourselves when we communicate
• Using our imaginations to anticipate others’ responses to our communication
• Different ways of articulating in varying contexts

You can find out more about Judy and access all she has to offer at www.judyrodman.com. Check out her podcast All Things Vocal on your favorite podcast app.

You can also find Judy on social media:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judyrodmanvoice
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/judyrodman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyrodman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/judyrodman

This episode was very skillfully made to sound beautiful by the talented Humberto Franco (http://www.humbertofranco.com/).

Would you consider reviewing the Audio Branding Podcast? If so, here's the Apple Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/audio-branding/id1489042453 And if you like what you hear (and read!) - please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!

How are you listening to this podcast right now? Maybe you're sitting at your computer or hearing it on a smart speaker, which probably means that you're listening with one app while keeping busy with a few other things. You might also be using a tablet or an MP3 player, which lets you stay on the move while you're hearing the show. But what's really become popular over the past few years is listening on your phone. Just this past month, almost 24 million podcast listeners used their smartphones, compared to 17 million for everything else put together. One thing all these choices have in common is that they let you keep busy while you're listening. And in today's fast-paced world, digital audio, particularly podcasts and audiobooks, is becoming a cornerstone of our daily lives.

Multitasking isn't always a good thing. We might feel like we're being more productive when we multitask, but over the years studies have shown that we really do better when we're focusing on just one task at a time. If you're curious to find out just how well you multitask, here's a link to a short test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-8JdsNWZiM

At the same time, audio does have some advantages of its own. Our brains are finely tuned to listening to each other, to hearing a speaker's tone and pace, their inflections and the mood they're expressing beneath their words. Reading is still a pretty new trick when it comes to our brains, which means written words might not connect as quickly or deeply as hearing them spoken aloud. And while reading lets us consider the words more carefully and go back over them more easily, digital audio leaves us free to keep working, to go running or driving, to live our lives while we’re listening.

Just recently I had Summurai founder Tal Florentin on the show, and his company is at the forefront of this digital audio revolution. Summurai is a content management service that takes written articles and condenses them into short audio snippets for people on the go. Here's a link to a video with more information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG8dn9K71mU

Even so, digital audio doesn’t leave much room for distraction. If you’re listening to a podcast on your way to work, that means you’re probably not listening to anything else right at that moment. This can make audio branding and advertising much more effective than other forms of online marketing; nearly 70% of podcast listeners report that podcast ads made them aware of new products and services. And that audience is quickly growing in the US: more than a hundred million Americans now listen to at least one podcast a month.

Audiobooks are also becoming more popular, with one in five Americans having listened to one within the past year. While the first vinyl book recordings were made in 1932, and the first books on tape released in 1975, the industry’s grown in ways that could hardly have been imagined back then. George Saunders’ 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo, for instance, has been adapted into an audiobook with a cast of 166 Hollywood actors, and last year an Audible adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman featured its own all-star cast. Audio dramas have also experienced a revival over the past few years, with authors penning exclusive works meant to be heard instead of read.

While the freedom to listen and multitask all at once might be a selling point for audio content, sound can create a more powerful connection than just one of convenience. The act of learning something new triggers the reward center in our brains, much the same way as eating our favorite food or winning a game. And storytelling isn’t just part of our history, it’s how most of us learned to read: we grew up listening to our parents and teachers read to us. Audio content can combine both these things together, teaching us new things in a way that connects with our deepest experiences.

Printed books and traditional radio certainly aren’t going away anytime soon, but digital audio has become the fastest growing sector in the publishing industry. Twenty million people started to listen to podcasts for the first time last year, and that number’s only going to keep growing. And as more and more people find themselves listening on the go, the opportunities to reach out to and engage with that emerging audience will keep growing with it.

Would you consider reviewing the Audio Branding Podcast? If so, here’s the Apple Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/audio-branding/id1489042453 And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with any...

"In tone therapy, we've created a space which is both safe and intriguing so we can solve some of the discomfort problem with mindfulness meditation and we can also solve some of the boredom aspects of it."

Michael Joly

This episode’s guest is the founder of solu®, maker of n.o.w. Tone TherapyTM, a sound meditation device. Before solu®, he designed a range of professional and consumer audio products for motion picture sound, home theater, and recording studio use. He has a background as a musician, an on-air announcer and radio business development executive, and he's also been immersed in the study of metaphysics, focusing on the intersection of sound, listening, and consciousness.

His name is Michael Joly and you can find the n.o.w. Tone TherapyTM System at nowbysolu.com. There’s a lot to unpack here, but Michael’s enthusiasm for audio and its proper use is something I really think you’re going to enjoy hearing. If you’re one of those people who are extremely sensitive to sound, I think this episode will validate and soothe you. I know Michael understands your pain!

Sounds in the Fog

Michael tells us about his first memorable experience with sound at the age of five when he heard the sound of distant foghorns on a misty morning in New Hampshire. That early memory not only sparked his interest in such experimental sound projects as Brian Eno's Music for Airports but also paved the way for his own work with ambient audio and tone therapy. "I realized," Michael explains, "I heard something like what Brian Eno is doing when I was a kid, that is, quasi-random overlapping of simple sounds to make new compositions. And that's what eventually led to tone therapy."

Listening to Nothing

We also talk about Michael’s early professional work, a career in cinematic audio technology that introduced him to a surprising new way of considering sound. “I spent a lot of time listening to the noise floor of optical soundtracks and the noise floor of magnetic tape, so I got really, really experienced at listening to nothing.” Listening to nothing became a big part of his approach to tone therapy, and turns out to be harder than we might expect. As he puts it, “I realized that you can't be thinking and listening attentively at the same time. It's just not possible to do. You're either giving your full attention to what you're hearing or you're thinking about it, or you're asking a question, or you're judging it.”

The Power of Now

Michael admits that when he first read the book The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, he wasn’t impressed. But a series of changes in his life several years ago, including his struggle with depression, helped him see it in a new light. We discuss how the name of his n.o.w. tone therapy system is an homage to the book and its role in shaping his approach to sound healing, and how the sound of church bells in Frankfurt, Germany inspired the distinctive sounds of tone therapy. “I remember hearing two bells ringing, then one bell ringing, then no bells, just the foot traffic on the street,” he says. “And then, like out of the movies, the clouds parted and this beam came down.”

Surprising Yet Familiar

Tone therapy can be a challenge at first, he explains, because so many of us simply aren’t used to sitting still and turning off all our thoughts and worries. That’s why he’s worked to create a sound therapy system that, as he describes it, is both safe and intriguing, and incorporates the harmonic sequence to create an instinctively soothing quality. We also take a look at his upcoming tone therapy software service, including a brand new sonic logo.

Next week we'll continue with a discussion of the best quality microphones, share helpful recording tips to try at home, and a look at what the future might bring when it comes to tone therapy.

Connect with the Guest

Website: https://www.nowbysolu.com/

Connect with Michael Joly on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-joly-043513144/

Connect with the Audio Branding Podcast

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