Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Why Small Businesses Need Sonic Branding to Be Remembered - Jetstream Sonic [Ep 92]

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Why Small Businesses Need Sonic Branding to Be Remembered - Jetstream Sonic [Ep 92] · Glovisor Podcast

• Jeff McQuilkin: The goal of marketing is really not to reach more people. The goal of marketing is to help those people remember you when they're ready to buy. Because Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Welcome to the Glovisor Podcast, where we explore business growth, communication, and personal development through real conversations with people who make an impact. Our guest is a composer and creator of Jetstream Sonic, helping small businesses build their identity through Sonic branding and connect with audiences in a whole new way. Globalizor welcomes. Jeff McQuilkin. Jeff McQuilkin: Hey, great to be here, Joe. Thanks for having me. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: you're welcome. So Jeff, tell us, what is it that you do and who do you help? Jeff McQuilkin: well what I do as a composer is I help small businesses basically become top of mind in their space through their marketing. And what I do is I I give their brand a sound, a unique distinctive sound. So think about when you open up Netflix, you don't just see the red N on the screen, you hear that ta-dum when the app opens up, right? That sound is a key part of the Netflix brand. And big companies like Netflix, T-Mobile, Intel have been doing this for a long time. The reason they do it is because sound imprints in memory faster and more effectively than visuals alone. And so I figured out that this works just as well for small businesses as it does for large. And small businesses are doing content, even though many of us, some of us are still advertising on TV, radio, CTV. But most of us are not. What we are doing is social media. We're doing YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, a podcast, right? Those are all areas where we make where we have the opportunity to put a distinctive sound in front of people associated with our brand. And if we will do that, we will have a bigger impact and into people's memory so that when they are ready to buy whatever it is that you are offering. there's a much better chance you're going to be the one that they think of first and not their comp not your competitor. Does that make sense? So that's what I do. I am I'm the first agency that I know of. I'm not going to be presumably say I'm the only one. I'm the first agency that I know of that does this exclusively for small businesses so that they can get that same benefit of brand recognition inside of their circle that these big brands do on a global scale. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: I have so many questions. Jeff McQuilkin: Ha ha ha ha. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: So now, how long does that sound have to be? Because you mentioned the Netflix, which is probably a second or two. And then you have Yeah, but Jeff McQuilkin: Mm-hmm. Right. It doesn't have to be long. Yeah. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: then you have other ones that are these long jingles that we remember, like these used car sales places that we remember back from the 90s, and and they kind of Jeff McQuilkin: Right. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: stuck with you. Jeff McQuilkin: Yeah, it it really doesn't have to be long or short. It it depends on the situation. You mentioned the jingle. What I do is kind of the cousin of the jingle. Okay. A really good jingle can become sonic branding. You know, I'm thinking of the Kit Kat jingle. Give me a break, right? That started. Jingles really are initially written to an ad. And but if it works really well, they'll keep it and keep reusing it and then becomes part of the brand. And that's kind of what happened with Kit Kat. they've been using that same jingle for, I don't know, maybe 30 years or more now. So, but it doesn't have to be that long. in my case, what I do, I I create that that little clip of music that usually two to two to seven seconds in general. And I call it an audio logo. That's my jargon for what I do. Okay, because it's meant to play when your logo displays. but I also do brand themes. Like, they want a longer underscore that's just theirs to use that can appear on all of their videos, I'll do that as well. So, but to me in my field, the audio logo is kind of the bread and butter. It's the thing that gets the job done, seventy percent of the heavy lifting. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: are there different types of those audio logos depending on the industry? Does it have to be high for certain industries and low for others? Jeff McQuilkin: Yes, it really depends on the industry. It depends on the business and their personality. Cause what we're doing, and we can do this in a couple of seconds, the the key to sound branding is it needs to be authentic to the brand, right? Not gonna take a you know corporate law firm and give them a banjo and a tuba. You know what I mean? probably. it depends if they're that that's the kind of lawyer they are. I don't know, but anyway, but but we try to make it appropriate to the brand. appropriate to what people would expect that brand to sound like. And we're going to do things that help people feel a certain way toward the brand because this is a unique branding asset that conveys emotion. And so when there's an emotional connection with a brand, then you have a deeper connection with your potential clients and customers anyway. You want that emotional connection. So we can we can help build that with sound. So long and short is it's different for every project. And honestly, that's what I love about what I do because every new client is a unique challenge. What kind of sounds are we going to create that are going to match this brand and and fit what they're doing? And the other thing about it, just while I'm thinking, I said the other thing about sonic branding is a good audio logo or sonic brand needs to be exclusive to the brand. Only they can use it, right? It needs to be original. It needs to be and it needs to be authentic. It needs to feel like it fits, I usually register the copyright and I give my client the only license to use the music. So it's only going to be heard around their brand. If they want to buy out the copyright, they can. In a few cases, a sound may be distinctive enough to qualify for what we would call a sound mark, which is like a trademark, except for sound. And then I, you know, you typically want to do that with the help of an attorney to do a search and make sure that that truly is distinctive enough to qualify for a sound mark. But the short answer, I gave you the long answer. The short answer is yes, it's protected by copyright or some sort of trademark. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: can you take us back? When was that moment that you said, you know, I really have something here with the sonic sound and I should explore this as a entrepreneurship venture? When was that moment? Jeff McQuilkin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was it was pretty easy for me to pick up. See, I've been a composer for 30 plus years and I still do film work, film and TV scoring. Okay. I came across this because at the time I was freelancing as a writer, as a s as kind of a side hustle. I was doing this for a wood flooring company. I was actually blogging for them, but they opened an office in a new city. They had no traction in the new city against their competition. So they decided to take out a local TV ad. They knew I was a composer. So they said, Would you like to write the music for the ad? I said, sure. I took the gig. I, but I took another look and I said, you know, I've known this brand a long time. I'm very familiar with this company. They're good friends of ours. I want to give them more value than just. little bit of music for the sad. Let's see if we can come up with something they can keep using for the next 10 years. So I hadn't even seen the ad. I don't even know that the ad had been produced yet, but I created a suite of music for them. I created a a a one minute, 30 second and 15 second version of original branded music, which is now what I consider to be a brand theme, right? I created the audio logo for them and I integrated that into those pieces of music and then I gave it that audio logo to them as a separate sound file. I wasn't even piecing together that what I was doing was giving the brand a sound, but that's exactly what I was doing because it was tailored to the brand and not the ad. And it was it was distinctive enough to it it sounded like them. They loved what I did. They put it on their ad. Six months later they got back to me and they said, Jeff, we have be gone from basically brand invisible in that community to to top of mind in local polling in six months. And we've made half a million dollars in revenue from the ad in the process. The ad still running to the best of my knowledge, the ad still running. So that was when that was my aha moment. That was when I looked and I said, okay, and I was already leaning that direction because I had so much fun with the project. So certainly other companies might be able to use this. But when I got that social proof, I'm like, this is it. This needs to be a business. I looked around and saw that nobody, virtually nobody was offering this to small business owners. And so I found an opening in the market and I just decided to jump in. So it's a unique experience because it is a blue ocean of sorts. I don't expect to be the only one swimming in this ocean. but right now I have the opportunity to kind of, you know, figure out how this all works. as a business and and that's an exciting place to be for somebody who's creative and it's a little scary for someone who's not normally accustomed to being a an entrepreneur. You know, composers are natural freelancers. We kind of go from project to project. This is my first opportunity to really build a business out of it. Thankfully I'm not alone. I've got a coach helping me and you know that kind of thing. But that's the story of how we kind of got just leaned into this and you know, in the in the in the months and years that have followed, it's proven to be, you know, it's proven to be effective. It's proven to be a a viable product and service that that is in demand. so I I'm excited to see what it's gonna do. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah, I suspect that you won't have too much competition because you have to be very creative and then you have to be an entrepreneur as well. Those are two very different Jeff McQuilkin: Mm-hmm. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: skill sets that you have to have. Jeff McQuilkin: That's true. That's true. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: So I think that you're ahead for a little bit of time there. Now, if someone started to work with you today, what would be that process? Jeff McQuilkin: yeah. So what we would do, we would start with a with a with an initial conversation with the with the client, the business owner. we would take probably 30 minutes to an hour is usually what it takes. and we we we record the conversation, we get their origin story, how they got to be doing what they're doing, what their passions are, why they're in business, who they're trying to reach, what niche they're trying to fill. And and really things like how they want people to feel around their their brand when they when someone encounters them. Because like I said, this is a unique asset that conveys emotion. once we've finished that conversation, I go away and I do independent research. I will research their industry, I'll research their competitors to see what is going on in their space musically. Chances are their competitors are not, do not have a sonic brand, but they are probably doing some sort of library music somewhere. Right, if they're marketing. And then I'll research the target audience, who they're trying to connect with, find out what they're responding to, and and in the intersection between who they are as a business and who they're trying to reach, we'll create two to three demos. Come back, have a listening session with the client, listen to the demos. at that point, generally one of three things happens. One, they love one of them. And we decide to go ahead and build it out. Two, they have the right to reject all of them, give me some notes, I'll go back to the drawing board. Or the third option is maybe we're leaning to one, but we want to hear something different, or we like elements of the first one, we'd like to tie it into the other one, you know, and then we just revise, we make revisions. We rinse and repeat that process until we have a consensus with the client. This should be the sound of the brand. Once we're in that specific, once we're in that place. I I mix and master the tracks to broadcast readiness. I give them again the only license to use that music. And then we close out the experience by making sure that they or their marketing team have a basic working knowledge of how to use that brand asset to their best advantage. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, do you offer examples to anyone who wants to start the process with you so that way they have a general idea? Jeff McQuilkin: Yes. Yes. I got I've been been spending the last two years assembling a body of work so they can hear demos of of what we do and and and we can you know there's there's video examples. there's pe some of my clients are now sending me here, this is what I did with the Sonic branding. so there's there's a growing body of work in the demo reel now. That I can share. And there's some demos just on my website, which is jetstreamsonic.com. So there's there's plenty of places to hear possibilities. as we continue to delve into specific industries, I'm gonna have more and more like here's what one of your somebody else in your space did, right? And that kind of thing to make it a little easier for them to understand. but typically, as far as generally speaking, most people. They will get this if they can remember a jingle from their childhood. They don't have to know all the numbers behind it. They know it works because it worked on them. If you have a jingle living rent-free in your head, you know this works. Right. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, one of the most interesting things that you just mentioned was what the receiver or the customer that you're targeting, how they're going to receive that. Jeff McQuilkin: Mm-hmm. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now, how do you identify? Let's just say that in my case, is let's we'll take Glovisor Podcast as an example. they're small to medium-sized business owners. Jeff McQuilkin: Mm-hmm. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: How do you how do you target? target that and say, okay, they need a specific sound in order for it to connect for them. Jeff McQuilkin: that's that's not an easy question to answer because it's different every time, but mostly in in your demographic, you know, we would we would, you know, what are what are other business podcasts doing? Well, how are they sounding? what are they using? How can we make yours different without sounding so different that people wouldn't associate that sound with your brand? One of the mistakes that is commonly made in this field is you can make a clip of music that sounds incredibly memorable and people will remember it, but they have trouble associating it with the brand. That's kind of useless. It has to be appropriate to the brand and and you have to you have to position it in a way with the brand. And that that comes with sometimes the branding agency or the marketing agency that's putting that stuff out can help with those things to make sure. that that that we're always tying the brand to the sound so that people always piece them together. but typically the biggest thing with with that I'm encountering to be honest with you is so far is we're we're we're taking this stuff as research to and but usually it leans one of two ways. We're going to lean into what the target audience expects to hear. Or we're gonna lean into a little more toward the personality of the business or the person who is in front and center. Okay. And the reason we keep that on a spectrum is because in some cases, like I'm thinking of one, a PR firm that I did this for. was so generic and so corporate based and so that was to create something that people expected would have buried him in the mix because everything sounded the same. It actually made more sense to lean into the personality of the owner. And in his case, he's kind of a rough edged Foo Fighters Bu Tang loving Bostonian. Okay. And so we created something that sounded like his personality And it truly does set him apart. It fits because it fits him. Anybody that knows him knows that's that guy, right? So that in that case we leaned more toward who that person was. But we always want the context of who are they reaching so we don't alienate them in the process. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: And that's where the creative side comes in. Jeff McQuilkin: Exactly. And that's why it's different for every project. You have to make those creative decisions with every every case is different. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Now is there a takeaway that you want our listeners to remember from this conversation? Jeff McQuilkin: Yes. And that is, you know, ultimately just just recognize that sound is one of your greatest assets. It is one of the assets that is the most overlooked by the small business community. back in the days when more small businesses were advertising on TV and radio, it was a lot more common for people to maybe c or the aver ad agency making the content to approach a local jingle house. production house and and get original music for an ad. That seems to have kind of gone away as we've ventured toward digital media, especially because now we ha always have these beds of pre-licensed music to draw from. It's easy and cheap to just go get a a track and put it on an ad or put it on a piece of content now. And now the social media platforms have made it even easier with trend audio. You can make a little short and just Pick some pre-licensed thing from their Mat Vass library and put it on there, you know. And all what we've we've lost something in translation that's just filling space. All you're doing is setting the bar at the same level of everybody else is doing what you're doing. You're not standing out with that. Sound has the ability when you use it correctly to help you stand out and be remembered. The goal of marketing is really not to reach more people. It is The goal of marketing is to help those people remember you when they're ready to buy. Because most of the people your marketing messages are hitting aren't ready to buy from you at the time they hear your message. The goal is you want them to think of you first when they are ready to buy. And the algorithms that we're working with now, they don't really work that way. They're in Instagram is not interested in helping us sell our stuff. Their goal is eyeballs on the screen. So when you put a piece of content up, someone views it, they are more the the next item to come up on the scroll is probably going to be your competitor. You're never in a vacuum. And so it's always this kind of crapshoot to figure out how do I get my content in front of the right person at the right time in the right way for they remember me before they see my competitors' content. I feel like sound as an asset, when you think of sound. As part of your brand and you develop that. However, you do that, when you have a sound associated with your brand, it puts some glue on the marketing in people's minds. So it makes it much easier for them to remember you after they leave the scroll. And that's what you want, what your what your goal is. When they come to the point of saying, who do I know that does X, or X is what you do, you want your name to come up first. That's why the big companies use it. And that's why small businesses should use it. So the takeaway, long story short, the takeaway is don't neglect sound as as a a consideration when you're developing your brand. If you're doing any kind of audiovisual content, that not having a unique sound, you're you're basically leaving some money on the table. You can get you can get stuff sold, but you you'll go a lot farther to getting people remembering you. If you understand that this is how the mind works, we work better with sound. and and so that's what I would leave with them. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: That's a great point. Now, where can people connect with you? Find out more about your work and continue this conversation. Jeff McQuilkin: they can connect with me on my website, which is jetstreamsonic.com. It's the easiest way to remember to to to find me. Samples of my music there. There's you can book if a quick 15 minute call for free just to learn a little more about it. however I I also will make sure that you have a link. I'd love to give a special offer to to the listeners of Glovisor. And that is we can do a full content marketing audit for you. It's normally something that costs $197. I'll waive that fee and do it for free. And I'll give you the link. You can just book time on my calendar if you want to have that conversation. I recommend going to the website first and listening to the samples that are there and just get a feel for it, you know. see if this is something you think you you want to do. And then we can have that conversation free conversation. to determine if if you if it is a good fit for you. If it is and you want to do that, the second half of the offer is whatever, whatever Sonic branding package you choose will take 30% off of it for you as a courtesy for, you know, coming to us through Glovisor. Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: thank you, Jeff. yeah, make sure you let Jeff know that you came through Glovisor and get those sale prices. That's awesome. Jeff, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate everything you've shared today. Jeff McQuilkin: Yeah, thank you for having me. I always enjoy talking about this with folks that are looking for new ideas. So Joe Abreu - GLOVISOR.com: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks everyone for listening. If this episode inspired you, make sure you share it. And don't forget to follow the Glovisor podcast for more conversations that make an impact. Till the next time.