Before you answer, it's worth understanding what these numbers actually measure. "Remembering a brand by its sound" can mean two very different things — and confusing them is the most common mistake in conversations about audio branding. That distinction determines what you should expect from your brand's sound and how to check whether it's working.
Recognizing is not the same as recalling
Memory psychology distinguishes between recognition and recall. Recognition kicks in when you hear a sound and know whose it is. Recall is when you can retrieve it from memory on your own: hum it, describe it, hear it in your head without any prompt at all.
This isn't academic hair-splitting. A study by Silas's team at Goldsmiths, University of London and the Max Planck Institute — 1,860 participants, 90 commercial sonic logos — showed that recall and recognition are separate memory processes. A sound that excels at one can be mediocre at the other.
For a marketer, this means one thing: goal first, sound second. Do you want customers to know it's you the moment they hear your signal in an ad, in an app, or in a store? You're working on recognition. Do you want them humming your melody in the shower? That's recall. Both goals are achievable, but each is designed differently and measured differently. Which is why the brief "make us a catchy sound" is about as precise as "make us a pretty logo."
It also has consequences for measurement. If you ask people "which brand comes to mind," you're testing recall. If you play a sound and ask "whose signature is this," you're testing recognition. The two tests can produce wildly different results for the very same sound — and neither replaces the other. Worth keeping in mind before a single number on a slide decides the fate of an entire project.
353 people, one conclusion: sound identifies the brand
The strongest number on this topic comes from a 2010 study by Wu, Fu, Huang, and Wang. The Taiwanese team played sonic signatures of well-known brands to 353 participants — no names, no logos, no visual context. Just sound.
265 out of 353 participants — 75.1% — correctly identified the brand by sound alone. No name, no logo, no image.
The Nokia Tune alone reached 68% recognition without the brand name being given. Think about what that means: two-thirds of people hear a few notes and know exactly which company it is. Static visuals don't work that way — cover up the name and the logo, and most ads dissolve into anonymous aesthetics.
What does that kind of recognition deliver in practice? A brand that identifies itself before its name is ever spoken. A customer hears the signal halfway through a spot and already knows who's talking — the rest of the message works for one specific brand, not the entire category. The same mechanism works in a store, in an app, and in any situation where a dozen messages are fighting for attention at once.
The same study holds one more finding that gets far less airtime. The length of a sonic logo had no significant effect on recognition (F=1.49; p=0.227). A shorter sound performed no worse than a longer one. That's good news: you don't need an anthem or a thirty-second composition. You need a few seconds that are unmistakably yours.
The chips that learned to play
"That works for Nokia because Nokia was everywhere" — you'll hear that objection sometimes. It's a fair one, which is why it's worth looking at a brand that is no tech giant. Tostitos, a snack brand, introduced a sonic logo and measured the results with research firm Veritonic in 2022.
After introducing its sonic logo, Tostitos recorded +38% brand recall, +13% brand score, and a +70% lift in overall message appeal.
One design decision — adding a sonic signature — and three metrics up. This example does a good job of correcting assumptions about audio branding. It's not a luxury reserved for global platforms. The memory mechanism works exactly the same in a category as down-to-earth as chips — because a consumer's brain doesn't sort industries into "serious" and "unserious." It sorts sounds that mean something from sounds that are merely background.
One more thing worth noting: Tostitos treated sound like any other marketing investment. First the rollout, then measurement with an outside research firm, and finally hard metrics. A brand's sound doesn't have to be a matter of taste or gut feeling. It can be planned, tested, and held accountable for results — exactly the way you hold a campaign or a packaging redesign accountable.
Why the melody won't leave your head
What makes sound so effective at identifying a brand? A melody has a property no image has: it can replay itself. Everyone knows the earworm phenomenon — the song that follows you around all day. The brain returns to a melody without permission and without effort. If that melody is a brand's signature, every one of those returns is free exposure.
The second factor is associative networks. Memory doesn't keep a brand in a single drawer. It stores it as a web of connections: images, words, emotions, situations — and sounds. The more strong nodes, the easier the brand is to retrieve. Sound adds an exceptionally durable node to that network, because it's tied to emotion and reinforced with every contact.
And there's a third element: sound works incidentally. You don't have to listen closely to remember it. The signal at the end of a spot, a notification sound in an app, the theme opening a podcast — all of it leaves a memory trace even when your attention is somewhere else. An image has to fight for a glance. Sound is simply there.
Two conditions: distinctiveness and repetition
If the mechanism is this powerful, why do most brands fail to use it? Because an effective sound requires two things at once — and typical market practice delivers neither.
The first is distinctiveness. The sound has to be recognizably yours, not just "pleasant" or "on trend." A stock-library track your competitor can buy tomorrow won't build recognition — it will build background. In the Wu study, it wasn't the length of the sound that determined the result. It was whether the sound unambiguously pointed to one brand.
The second is repetition. Recognition grows with every consistent exposure and resets with every change of direction. A brand that swaps its music with every campaign keeps starting from zero. A brand that speaks the same sonic language for years accumulates memory — the way Nokia did, playing one melody for decades until it hit 68% recognition without its name ever being mentioned.
In practice, repetition means putting your sound everywhere the brand meets its customers:
- in video and radio advertising — the same signature in every campaign, regardless of the creative;
- in digital products — notifications, confirmations, success moments in the app;
- in service and physical spaces — the call center, points of sale, company events.
Only when both conditions come together — with a clearly chosen memory goal, the one we covered at the start — does sound become a brand asset. One that can't be copied and that works at every touchpoint. It's also the answer to the question in the headline. Would 75% of people recognize your brand by sound alone? Probably not today — because most likely there's nothing for them to recognize yet. But that's not a matter of budget or scale. It's a matter of deciding that your sound stops being an accident and becomes a system.
Sources
- Wu, Fu, Huang, and Wang, 2010 — study of brand recognition based on sound (N=353, Taiwan): 75.1% correct identifications (265 participants), Nokia Tune at 68% without the brand name, no significant effect of sonic logo length (F=1.49; p=0.227).
- Tostitos / Veritonic, 2022 — measurement of sonic logo impact: +38% brand recall, +13% brand score, +70% overall message appeal.
- Silas et al., 2026 — Goldsmiths, University of London and the Max Planck Institute (N=1,860, 90 sonic logos): recall and recognition as separate memory processes.
Want to hear what a brand designed for recognition sounds like? Explore our work. And if you'd like to test how recognizable your own brand's sound is, book a free consultation — we'll help you figure out where to start.