Alec Wood, PhD and Colleen Fahey
How Consumer Attention Has Changed
Attention spans have been declining rapidly, leaving consumers in a perpetual state of continuous partial attention. This means that when someone is scrolling down TikTok or Instagram reels, you have only a few seconds to cut through the noise, capture attention, and make your brand known.
Sound is the most effective way of doing that. The body responds to sound faster than visual information, about 20-40 milliseconds faster in fact (150-170ms compared to 180-200ms) (Jain et al. 2015).
It’s then no surprise that intentional, strategic sound has been proven to be the most effective tool to drive early brand recognition. According to System1, of all brand assets, sonic ranked highest at driving brand awareness within the first 2 seconds of an ad. When a proprietary sonic asset is presented, it increased brand awareness by 191%.
Brand music moreover rated highest at capturing attention. A powerful, memorable, and meaningful sonic logo is the best investment you can make in this attention economy!
Research, again from System1, also shows that using 4 distinctive brand assets is most effective at capturing attention during these critical first few seconds. The most effective brands have been using a mix of sonic and visual assets to reach that optimal amount.
Also, think about what you’re doing when you’re scrolling down a TikTok feed or Instagram Reels. Your eyes might be shut, averted, or darting all over a screen. You blink, look around, read comments on the video, and so forth. Sound bypasses the dilemma of wandering, distracted, or closed eyes: it keeps playing and you keep hearing it no matter what. As the author Pascal Quignard said, “the ears have no eyelids”—there’s no opting out of the sonic experience!
The brands that are most intentional, strategic, and consistent with their sonic branding are therefore poised to succeed in the attention economy. It is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must have.”
How Can Brands Use Sound More Strategically?
Most brands are behind the curve. They spend fortunes on their visual identities yet leave the choice for sound and music to the various agencies, suppliers, and creators who produce their videos, telephone hold music, commercials, social media, and events. Many treat sound or music as mere entertainment, choosing it on instinctual whims or in adherence to viral trends, as something just fill the silence and “tag on” as an afterthought.
This is all despite the proven benefits of a coherent sonic brand strategy: the verdict is in and sonic identity has been proven to be more effective than visual identity at driving attention, brand memory, loyalty, and viral reach (Ipsos 2020, SoundOut 2020, Dentsu & Lumen 2023).
Just as your brand has a visual identity, it should have a distinctive, proprietary sonic identity that reflects its values, personality and aspirations. And just as your visual identity accompanies your brand’s presentation across all touchpoints, so should your sonic identity.
What Does Effective Sonic Branding Sound Like?
First off, a well-designed sonic logo. Just as there are countless ways to create visual identities, there are countless ways to create sonic identities, some more effective than others. Melodic intervals, keys, chords, voices, instruments, timbres, and rhythms come together to holistically convey brand identity in the same way that colors, lines, fonts, and shapes come together to holistically convey it in the visual medium.
Using a different instrument is similar to using a different font: they have different feels, cultural associations, insinuations. Certain kinds of sounds excel more at capturing attention, and others at instilling familiarity and building trust in existing consumers.
For example, research suggests that some sonic logos are easier to recall—to remember and reproduce even in the absence of sound whereas others are easier to recognize when heard (Silas et al., 2026). Recognition says, “When you hear us, know it’s us”; recallable sounds, by contrast, are apt to become earworms. Logos with wider melodic leaps and greater complexity for example, are easier to recognize, since they are more distinct. Those with simpler melodies are easier to recall or sing back, whether out loud or in one’s head.
Second, consistent use. TikTok debuted its sonic logo in October 2022, and within 6 months it had already achieved 70% recognition and 47% brand attribution with Gen Z (SoundOut 2023). This was only possible, of course, by repeatedly exposing people to it as an essential part of the user experience. Sonic logos are also at their best when they are not competing with attention with other sonic assets. Some brands confuse their consumers by using different music and sonic approaches at different touchpoints or using several very distinct sonic logos. This makes it harder to establish a close connection between brand sound and brand identity and leads brands to miss out on many of the benefits.
The Future of Brand Attention is Sonic
As attention spans continue to shrink and visual stimulation falls away, the competitive advantage will go to those who invest in sonic branding. It will not only capture consumer attention, but also underscore brand values, creative strategy and most importantly communicate the role of the brand in the consumer’s life. Without it, the brand will struggle to survive.
