Delve into the future of sonic branding

You know that feeling of anticipation you get on hearing the ldquozingrdquo when you place a food order online And how anyone standing across the room instantly knows yoursquove ordered lunch just by hearing that sound Thatrsquos the power of sonic brandingThat ldquozingrdquo which echoes around the world a billion times a year originated right here in Mumbai at Brandmusiq a sonic branding agency based in Bandra West ldquoThe quickest way to the customerrsquos heart is through their earrdquo says founder and soundsmith Rajeev Raja who quit his job as creative director at a leading ad agency in 2011 to set up Brandmusiq pioneering the concept of musical logos or ldquoMogosrdquo a term coined by him as a crucial part of building a brandrsquos identitySonic branding itself is not a new concept by any means but there is one major difference that sets Mogos apart from the jingles of yoremdashthe modern consumerrsquos shrinking attention span ldquoConsumers now spend a lot more time on social media but will scroll past in a matter of seconds They no longer have 30 seconds to spare for an entire jingle on TV Three to four seconds is good thatrsquos what we call a Mogo A short clip of 15 seconds that can invoke brand recall is even better we call that a miniMogo The lsquozingrsquo is an example of miniMogordquo says RajaldquoThe goal is for the Mogo and miniMogo to have a Pavlovian effect when you hear it all the memories and associations come flooding back Itrsquos just like hearing a song from childhood you donrsquot need to hear the whole song just the first few notes will transport you to your grandparentrsquos house with the smell of food prepared by your grandmomrdquo adds Raja who is also an accomplished Jazz flautist with several international tours under his beltScaling up with AIFor Raja sonic branding was a chance to marry his two great passionsmdashbranding and music But his trailblazing doesnrsquot end there Raja and Brandmusiq cofounder and CEO Ajit Varma have now set their sights on AI and how they can harness it to optimise sonic branding furtherldquoOne of the challenges that any company in modern world has is how it can scale up As the business grows speed becomes crucial If our response time is slow we miss out on opportunities So we looked at ways to use AI to address this One of the most basic ways is to use it as a repository or vault where we can store clientsrsquo sonic assetsmdashall the original scores of music used in their branding AI will also be required to search for and retrieve this information in an intelligent manner We should be able to search for music by say genres moods country This is what we have planned for the most basic level of our AI platformrdquo says Raja adding that they are just six months away from achieving this stageThe next more advanced stage of AI development will be to generate customised music for brands by adapting the Mogo for say the background score in a reel ldquoBrands will sometimes use stock music as a background score in videos or reels etc Instead we can use AI to create new music with the brandrsquos own Mogo embedded in the melody so that even that reelrsquos music will remind you of the brand There may be 1000 such pieces of content to be created in a year for a single brand which will require quick turnaround AI could achieve this in as little as 24 hoursrdquo says Raja This phase of AI development will take about two more years to achieve he estimatesChallenges aheadItrsquos all the more unusual for Brandmusiq to embrace artificial intelligence at a time when many in creative fields are shunning it over concerns of copyright infringement and possible devaluation of art and edging out of human creativityOf these copyright infringement is a very real concern and Brandmusiq is paying particular attention to prevent this with their AI says Raja ldquoWe are creating learning models for our AI platform based on our own content from all the music we have created There is also stock music that is licencefree which AI can learn from We donrsquot want to get into a situation where it creates any music that sounds similar to anything else out there Itrsquos also going to be a challenge to teach AI to create pieces that sound like music and not muzakrdquo he addsAs for the other fears AI is a long way off from posing a credible threat to human creativity he says ldquoAI will not replace musicians No AI is ever going to play the flute like me We still need musicians to make music to make Mogos AI canrsquot do that It can adapt the music created by us and save time on that but it canrsquot feel the emotions in musicrdquo adds RajaWhat is the tool An AIbased sonic vault that will store all the sonic assets of clients and also enable intelligent search and retrieval of the content based on principle of meta tagging This will allow search by genre mood or beats per minute bpm At the advanced level generative AI will help create musical content for diverse marketing needs with the Mogo embeddedHow will it work The brand or creative agency will give a prompt with their requirementndashduration of music mood bpm purpose for example music for an Instagram reel or a TV commercialWhom will it help Itrsquoll help brands immeasurably They will get branded music not vanilla content Even if it is background music for a video it will have an element of their brand identity says Raja