Siemens Audio Branding

Siemens Audio Branding

 


 

Winner in the category
Audio Branding

 

Applicant
why do birds GmbH

 

Abstract

The Siemens brand sound is very human oriented and features female voices as well as progressive sounds and driving rhythms to illustrate the brand’s claim „Ingenuity for life“. The new sound was a bold move for the engineer-driven company. Therefore the process was accompanied by international market testings to ensure wide acceptance.
 

Detailed project description

In 2016 Siemens decided to create a completely new Corporate Sound. A big paradigm-shift changed the brand’s outlook from thinking “inside-out” to “outside-in”. In the past Siemens had been a purely engineer-driven enterprise. It’s not about innovative products as a self-purpose but about finding solutions to people’s problems. The new approach is more focused on people’s needs mirrored in the Siemens claim “Ingenuity for life”. It shows that Siemens’ technical expertise circles around “real” issues – the things that truly matter in life.

A female voice in the music and sound logo demonstrates this new thinking and conveys proximity to the customers. The engineering, ”ingenuity“ aspect shows in Siemens’ constant search for new solutions to match clients‘ needs. It is translated into sound through the use of restless piano themes, progressive sounds and driving rhythms. 

To connect ingenuity and life, a gradient between real and synthesized sounds became a central element of the new Brand Sound – just as the “dynamic petrol“ color gradient is the prominent element of Siemens’ visual appearance.

The whole story and the sound gradient are packed into the 2.5 seconds long sound logo where the voice starts synthesized and turns more and more into the natural voice. For musical inspiration we dug deep into the Siemens history and found the first ever Siemens product from 1847: the pointer telegraph, a device for transmitting messages over long distances. It helped us translate the name Siemens into a motif of the brand music.

The brand voice for Siemens was chose to be male to contrast the female voices in the sound logo and brand music. We consciously declined typical, highly professional, corporate, low-pitched voices which would rather have fitted to the “old” Siemens. We looked for a very natural voice, symbolizing the proximity to the “outside world”, also conveying a start-up appeal for the brand.

Right from the beginning Siemens asked for a sound that is easy to implement. Next to music-library tracks suited for different application needs, event-sound kits and brand guidelines we have therefore created a Siemens Sampler instrument featuring all relevant brand sounds, enabling professional music producers around the world to work with the original Siemens sounds and create recognizable brand music.
 

Case film
 
Nominations ISA2017