Audio Branding

🎤 Download my Sounding Your Best as a Podcast Guest worksheet here! 🎤 After fifteen years in the voiceover industry, almost three years of hosting the Audio Branding podcast where I talk about the power of sound, and having been a guest on a number of podcasts myself, I've learned a thing or two about creating quality audio. I hope some of the lessons I've learned can help you find just the righ...

“They often have a suite of sounds. Now you still have to follow all regulations that have to do with safety and that kind of thing, but now the sound inside the car can be reflected in the marketing communications around it, so that’s a very big use of sound.” -- Colleen Fahey   This episode’s the second half of my interview with author, creative executive, and sonic branding expert Colleen...

“All news music doesn't have to have trumpets and trombones, and all trains don't have to just ring, you know, or honk. And all appliances shouldn't always sound like ‘beep beep beep,’ you know, chip sounds instead of having a tune that would make people remember them better and maybe like them better.” -- Colleen Fahey   This week’s guest is a creative executive with deep experience in brand...

“What’s great about podcasting is there's that intimacy there. It’s just audio. It’s really fun when I listen to a podcast or I edit a podcast and I don’t know what the guest looks like, I don’t know anything about a guest, and I’m trying to imagine what type of personality that guest has. And through voice you get personality, but it’s kind of like shaped in a different way.” -- Nicolae Bogdan Br...

“First things first, to get a podcast to sound good is not hard. Many people think that it’s so hard to make it sound great: it’s not. The first thing they have to remember is that, if you have a good recording, I would say that you don’t even need an editor to get it done for you at the end.” -- Nicolae Bogdan Bratis   This episode’s guest comes from a musical background and has had quite a...

“When we are listening to an audio file created by AI, we try to find where the machine got it from, but when we are listening because we just want to listen, we don't really care.” -- Ron Jaworski   This episode’s the second half of my interview with Trinity Audio CEO and ad tech veteran Ron Jaworski as we talk about the future of proprietary AI voices, Ron’s vision for Trinity Audio, and so...

“In similar ways to when the first iPhone came out and then five years later, ten years later, we looked back and said to ourselves ‘oh my god, that completely changed my life,’ that's the same thing that's going to happen with audio and voice.” -- Ron Jaworski   My next guest is the CEO of Trinity Audio, a unified platform that allows content owners to strategically evolve and deliver audio...

“I can't imagine – and again, I always have to preface this by saying I know it's not just about the audio logo – but I just can't imagine that when you're designing a print logo why you don't also sit there and go ‘I wonder what that thing would sound like if it could make sound,’ and then develop that too, and then present both of them at the same time, in combination, and give yourself one more...

“It certainly adds another sense to sight, you know, and most of the people that I talk to, you can see a logo, but sound really helps you to feel a logo.” -- Dr. David Allan   My next guest is a professor of marketing at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has a BA in communications from American University, an MBA in marketing from St Joseph's, and a Ph. D. in Mass M...

Advertising’s come a long way from the television jingles and old-fashioned radio spots of decades past. In the age of social media and targeted algorithms, the ads you see and hear online are very often tailored to your particular user profile. Of course, that’s just when you’re online. But what if it wasn’t? What if, while you’re out shopping or walking down a crowded street, you heard an ad aim...

“It's about doing something that's relevant to that brand that makes people, you know, have intrigue and then go either search for it or find out more information.” -- Aaron Matthews   This episode's the second half of my interview with audio branding expert and creative director Aaron Matthews as we talk about how Creative Fix goes about crafting the perfect brand sound, the secret to hostin...

“Production companies make these amazing videos and then go ‘oh, we need to think about some music and stuff,’ and it sort of like becomes a bit of a rush. But actually, when you think about it at the same time as pre-production and you start planning out how the sound's going to work with the visuals, it elevates the video so much. And you'll know this if you've ever watched some of the latest pr...

“People don't forget that stuff. They remember people that blow their minds. They won't necessarily remember the music, people won't remember the thing that you did, but they'll remember the way that you made them feel, whether that's by your actions or by the actual emotion that you've imparted to them via your music, or your sound, or whatever it happens to be.” --  Nick Morrison   Thi...

“One of my Berklee professors, one of my favorite things that has stayed with me from my time there, said 'you know, Nick, a bad day playing music is still better than a good day doing just about anything else.'" --  Nick Morrison   This episode's guest is an Amazon #1 bestselling author and a professional musician, composer, teacher, voice actor, YouTube creator, actor, and a music and...

“One of the wonderful things about music is that it's by and large pretty universal, you know, when almost any culture will perceive a minor chord as something that feels sad. Even my 4-year-old son can identify that as 'oh that's sad.’ But there are more subtleties too, you know, and that may affect instrument choice, it might affect tempo, and it might affect chord progression.” -- Eric Singer &...

“There are generally two things that I want to focus on when presenting the creative to a client. First, and I think the most important, is the why: what is the justification for why we have done this or why we've included this instrument, why we're including this long breakdown section, why this tempo, whatever it is.”  -- Eric Singer   My guest's first love in this episode was audio, b...

“It bothers me so much to see companies out there that are taking advantage of people or, you know, preying on their hopes and dreams. I mean, I have never, ever told anybody that this was easy, as being a voice actor, and I never told them that it was fast. I've always said that it's a crock-pot career, it's not a microwave meal." -- Dan Friedman   This episode is the second half of my inter...

“But we do have to remember that when we are communicating, when words are coming out of our mouths and reaching somebody's ears, that's a connection, that's a strong connection, and if we are not really believing in the things that we are saying, or feeling the things that we are saying, or able to create a feeling that's strong, then that connection won't be strong enough. And that's really impo...

“Tap into who your consumer is, really know. And I don't mean like ‘males 25-34 years old who live in cities.’ No, it's like ‘what's important to this person, where do they spend their time,’ you know, those kinds of things, really thinking about who that person is and then what your company's role, what your brand's role, plays in their lives. And then, just naturally, you know how music can kind...

“The way that advertising agencies, for example, are structured now is still based on the Mad Men era where only billboards and print existed. So we have an art director and a copywriter on every project, but we don't have a sound person, we don't have a sound director. And so much of the way that we interact with the world, or 'consume' content, is through audio. I think it's just about thinking...

“Through our research, we also found that anything beyond four notes, if we were to create a pattern that had more than four notes in it, that it started to sound too much like a jingle and just out of place for an automobile. Automobiles really just had single-tone dings, and so we knew we couldn't stray too far from that, or we would start sounding too much like a cell phone or something out of...

“I think that the future of audio is one that's customized, personalized, interactive, intelligent and dynamic, you know, instead of always treating audio as on and off, we need to treat it in a way that's delivered to each person as a unique experience.” --  Sean Beeson This episode features a rare two-for-one interview with a powerful sonic duo, Jon Brennan and Sean Beeson, formerly of Soni...

“Yes, bring in new voices. Yes, you know, do it, go for it. But if it doesn't work with the first diverse voice – non-whites, I'm talking about non-whites now – that doesn't mean it's a failure. You know, keep going, keep working on it, these are systemic problems that have been in place almost since the beginning of audio, and so it's going to take time to what I call undo the bias.” -- LaTonya J...

“The ability to share information and to help other people have opportunities to provide their voice, if you will, to a read can make such a huge difference in what happens and how the audience receives it and how even the customer or the client receives what's being read.” --  LaTonya J. Pegues   For years LaTonya J. Pegues has been known as a person who can provide simple explanations...

“You set the tone for your podcast by how you sound and how you interact with the audience. So there are a lot of elements to it, you know, obviously preparation and planning and practice, all those things." -- Dan Friedman   This week continues our Clubhouse discussion as voiceover artist and sound engineer Dan Friedman answers questions about voice training, keeping listeners engaged, and o...