SoundOut has revealed the leading sonic logos for 2022 - which it has named the year of the Sonic Boom due to the growing strategic focus on audio assets. These sonic logos rank as the most effective thanks to a combination of appeal, perceived brand value, personality match and brand recognition.

The most effective sonic logo of 2022 is Arby's, followed by Goldfish and Farmers - with all three capitalising on the subconscious power of music to engage with their consumers. 

The ranking of sonic logos reflects SoundOut's awareness that sonic branding is increasingly recognised as a powerful and distinctive strategic brand asset, rather than a marketing afterthought. 

Arby's boasts an overall score of 80%, based on a combined score of 81% for appeal; 77% for perceived brand value; 77% for personality match; and 85% for brand recognition. By matching their sonic marketing to their overarching brand personality, Arby's sonic logo contributes to building brand recognition and equity with every consumer interaction.

Arby's is followed by Goldfish and Farmers, both with a score of 78%. The top 10 of US sonic logos are:

SoundOut's ranking is underpinned by cold, hard, quantitative data on 114 US sonic logos. This is based on over 500,000 data points captured from 30,000 US consumers.

David Courtier-Dutton, Founder and CEO of SoundOut, said: "Well done to Arby's, Goldfish and Farmers - these are the brands that are really getting strategic with their sonic assets and putting the subconscious power of music to work for their brand. As a result of the shift towards a strategic musical approach for brands, I expect to see a growing value divide between brands that have a sonic strategy and those that do not. Those that ensure their investment in music creates distinctive brand asset status will ultimately supercharge their brand recognition through a consistent sonic approach that resonates with their desired brand personality.  Those that do not risk confusing consumers and leaking brand recognition to competitors." 

New entrants

Outside the top 10, SoundOut can reveal that 10 new entrants have already hit the full ranking of 114 US sonic brands. The leading newcomer is Colgate, with a sonic logo that has hit the ranking at number 39, thanks to an impressive personality match of 89%. The full ranking from 1-114 of the US sonic logos can be seen here - with the newcomers highlighted in orange.

Methodology

The overall rankings were created by equally weighting four key factors:

1. Appeal - how much do consumers like the sonic logo?  
2. Perceived brand value was assessed using an implicit (subconscious) testing methodology combining audio and imagery.
3. Brand personality match was calculated using SoundOut's BrandMatch technology.  
4. Brand recognition is simply a measure of the percentage of consumers who could name the brand from just hearing the sonic logo.  

ENDS

About SoundOut

SoundOut is the world leader in strategic sonic branding and audio marketing testing. It has achieved this lead position by combining three powerful capabilities.  

• Working with world-leading music psychologists and over 500,000 consumers, it has mapped the explicit emotional DNA of sound and used this as the foundation for a suite of tools, such as BrandMatch, that can be used at various stages of sonic branding development to increase the certainty of a return on investment. 
• The development of a wholly owned consumer panel of over 3.5 million people, which enables brands to test their sonic assets at scale.  
• The testing and analysis of almost 200 in-market sonic logos (The SoundOut Index) that reveals the key criteria that are essential to audio branding and audio marketing success. 

Website: www.soundout.com

For more information about SoundOut, please contact:

Neha Khatwani, Carta Communications, +44 (0)7717 576 297 or neha.khatwani@cartacomms.com