Friday Mailing: Do Streaming Brands *Need* Their Own Sonic Versions of Netflix's "Tudum"?
I cut a section of Wednesday’s mailing about streaming services not having a “sonic” dimension to their brands like Netflix’s “tudum”. It was under the Awareness section of my walk-through of a generic conversion funnel. It was not adding to the longer essay, it's a short essay in itself, and I thought it would be worthwhile to send it today with some additional commentary.
The question that emerged as I was writing was: Other than HBO’s longstanding intro sound - which it notably HBO Max does not use when the HBO Max app opens - are there any streaming brands that rely on a sonic identity to generate brand awareness?
I think it’s a worthwhile question to ask given just how much Netflix milks the “tudum”: it launched a global fan event in Fall 2021, and then launched a website in December 2021 “for fans to dive deeper into the stories they love, fuel their obsessions and start new conversations. However, these both merit the caveat that the architect of those endeavors - then-CMO Bozoma St. John - seemed to fail Netflix’s “keeper test” last month.
I offer one answer to the question, below, with a short comparison of HBO Max and Netflix.
Sonic Brands & Streaming
In January, Marketing Week’s Mark Ritson on the UK’s top 10 sonic brands to explain why Netflix had been so successful in generating brand awareness as “the clear first mover and market leader”:
When it comes to defining a brand’s distinctive assets, he says his simple advice is “logo plus three”. So in addition to a logo, brands should think about having a distinctive colour, a brand character and a sonic identity – what used to be referred to as a jingle.
“We’re born with five senses and they’re all used to drive distinctiveness, but we’re trapped in 20% of the potential as we’re only using visual assets,” he says.
He thinks sonic brands are far more effective at driving campaign effectiveness given how few brands have sonic cues. So it is notable that in his list of top 10 brands, Netflix’s “Tudum” sound ranks #4 in the UK out of 80 he reviewed with the following scores [1]:
Appeal: 85%
Personality: 64%
Value: 51%
Salient: 83%
He expected Netflix’s brand to be “even higher”, and believes the 64% for Personality mostly reflects the sound’s association with Netflix’s outstanding product. [2]
HBO Max & Awareness
HBO Max has relied on a very different, more limited strategy of awareness to find growth in the US market.
First, HBO Max does not have a sonic identity. HBO has a sonic identity with its longstanding intro sound, but HBO Max has not adopted it as its equivalent to “tudum” for when the app launches. Rather it limits the use of that sound to the introductions to HBO and HBO Max originals.
Second, because HBO Max lacks a “logo plus three” - specifically, a brand character and a sonic identity (its gradient purple color seems distinctive)- the HBO Max brand may have self-limited its ability to generate awareness in both the US and UK markets.
Instead, HBO Max’s brand awareness, to date, has been driven mostly by the “robust marketing budget” behind its “Project Popcorn” day-and-date release strategy for Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020 and 17 tentpole movies in 2021.
HBO Max Brand Under Warner Bros. Discovery
Notably HBO Max's newest sister service discovery+ does not have a sonic brand identity, either. Will or should Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) management pursue a sonic identity to help improve brand awareness for the next platform for both HBO Max and discovery+? And if they did, would it make a difference?
It’s an interesting question worth considering for WBD, whose management is still very much on a learning curve for streaming.
But, with CEO David Zaslav’s ambitious goal for “One platform that we take everywhere in the world in every language”, it is going to need as many tools to drive brand awareness as necessary. This will be especially true if it decides to move on from the HBO Max brand, as has been rumored it may do.
What is clear from the UK sample of data is that the sound helps with the brand appeal and bringing-to-mind of the brand with consumers. HBO Max may not need that. But a new value proposition with as diverse a library as Warner Bros. Discovery's may need a sonic identity to distinguish itself with consumers.
Footnotes
[1] Using a database of 14,400 British consumers surveyed by Soundout in 2021, he identified four scores, equally weighted, measuring:
Appeal: How much they like the melody or sound, rated 1 to 10
Personality: how much does the sonic asset match the perceived personality of the brand, is there a fit there? If the consumer was aware of the brand, Soundout measured brand attributes based on their own brand personality scale. But if the consumer was not aware of the brand, Soundout measured the perception of the sonic brand, itself, on the same dimension. They then looked at the match: Is the perception of the brand close to the perception of the jingle and are they relatively linked together?
Value: Perceived price with Sonic Brand or without sonic brand present, does it drive pricing sensitivity?
Salience: When cued with the sonic brand, does it bring the actual brand to mind or not? Does the asset drive awareness of the brand?
[2] Notably he thinks it’s a “very strange sonic asset for entertainment” and believes “they picked the wrong thing and made their life harder than they needed to.”