Is sound the most overlooked brand asset ?

In today’s fragmented media landscape, building brand awareness is harder than ever. The brands that succeed in this context are those that successfully build and reinforce distinctive memory structures (as pioneered by Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk). These memory structures help consumers to recognize & recall a brand now of choice. Therefore, advertising should not solely aim to entertain or inform but try to encode memory.

The 191% Lift You’re Missing Out On

Recent research from System1 underscores the massive power of audio in short-form entertainment. According to their data, introducing a Sonic Asset in the first two seconds of an ad boosts brand awareness lift by a staggering 191%. This drastically outperforms a standalone visual logo (182%) and even beats out traditional slogans (27%) and specific product placements (24%).

While social media used to be a "sound-off" environment, it transitioned to a "sound-on" world years ago. Especially with the rise of TikTok and Reels. Yet, a glaring blind spot remains. Research from Ipsos reveals that while 92% of ads utilize visual brand assets, fewer than 10% leverage sonic assets. Audio is not just underused; it is grossly undervalued.

The Secret to Profit and Trust

The commercial consequences of this blind spot are profound. Unveiled at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a landmark global study by Radiocentre, Effie, and System1, analyzing over 1,200 international campaigns across 17 years, revealed that integrating audio into the marketing mix is a critical catalyst for financial growth.

According to the research presented by marketing consultant Professor Mark Ritson, campaigns that include audio outperform those without it across every major commercial lever:

• +75% increase in overall campaign profit
• +81% boost in consumer trust
• +81% growth in price insensitivity (protecting profit margins)
• +19% improvement in customer acquisition

As Ritson noted to the festival audience, audio is the "catalyst that makes your whole campaign work harder... an unfair advantage hiding in plain sight." When an emotionally driven creative campaign is explicitly paired with distinctive sonic branding assets, the profit performance more than doubles.

Wired for Sound: The Biology of Audio

More than catching attention, sound touches us emotionally. Biologically, hearing is our primordial sense; we can hear before we can see, touch, taste, smell. Remarkably, it’s also the final sense to fade when we die, as the brain fires last electrical impulses. 

Humans are quite literally wired to react emotionally to sound. And according to research by Zorfas and Leemon published in Harvard Business Review, an emotionally connected consumer is more than twice as valuable as a merely “highly satisfied one”.

The Cost of Silence vs. The ROI of Strategy

Beyond the emotional, financial and cognitive lift, building a sonic system is a massive operational optimization. Marketers routinely bleed budget on thousands of fragmented, one-time stock music licenses. Paying repeatedly for generic background noise that builds zero long-term equity.

Investing in a solid, proprietary sonic system flips this from an ongoing expense to a permanent asset. It pays dividends for years to come, replacing recurring licensing fees with a unified audio kit that compounds in brand value every single time it plays.

Finding Your Brand's Voice

As audio continues to gain importance across podcasts, social platforms, voice interfaces and other digital touchpoints, more brands are exploring how sound can contribute to recognition, consistency and emotional connection. Reviewing the role of sonic assets within a brand ecosystem can help identify opportunities to strengthen distinctive brand cues and create a more cohesive experience across channels.

For organizations looking to further explore this topic, BCP Belgium provides an overview of sound studios affiliated with BCP. These studios meet professional industry standards and offer expertise in commercial content production, with information available on their areas of specialization and previous work.