Luxury brands spend significant amounts of money on how they look, but how often do they pay attention to how they sound? The inappropriate retail soundscapes of unconscious brands can decrease in-store sales 28 percent. That’s why Julian Treasure founded The Sound Agency.

Treasure and his team study the effects of sound on our lives and work with businesses to create acoustic soundscapes to optimize sales. He’s worked with Nokia, Honda, and is even responsible for the bird sounds that fill the Glasgow airport.

According to Treasure, every brand should ask the question, “What is the sound of this brand?” Then they should apply the Four Golden Rules of sound design to create the sound equivalent of brand voice. They are as follows:

1. Make it valuable.

2. Make it appropriate.

3. Make brand sounds congruent, pointing in the same direction as visual communication. Doing this can increase the impact of sound by more than 1100%. If this isn’t executed properly, brands reduce the impact of sounds by 86 percent.

4. Test, Test, Test. Like a good landing page or email marketing headline, soundscapes must be tested.

Once brands have used the Four Golden Rules, they can create a core group of BrandSound Guidelines that inform things like product sound, brand voice, brand music, advertising sounds, and more. These soundscapes can influence consumer behavior across commercial environments.

Treasure has found that brands who get this formula right can increase sales by up to 38 percent, meaning that in essence, sound design is profitable.

See Julian Treasure Speak

Want to see more of Julian Treasure and hear more about the principles of his work? He will deliver a presentation about listening at L2′s upcoming Innovation Forum on November 10, 2011. Join us in New York to see him, along with top academics and speakers from EDITD, Warby Parker, and more.

Tags: Brand Sound, Julian Treasure, Listening, Sound, SoundScape

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