Journal · Sonic branding
What does a luxury brand sound like?
In the world of luxury brands, every detail matters. From the texture of a product to its visual appeal, each element plays a crucial role in shaping the brand’s identity. But there’s one aspect that often goes unnoticed, yet holds immense potential: sound. This essay explores sonic branding in the luxury sector, answering an intriguing question - what does a luxury brand sound like?
The symphony of luxury
Luxury brands are not just about opulence and exclusivity; they’re about creating a unique, immersive experience that resonates with their audience. Sound plays a pivotal role in this. Whether it’s the distinctive roar of a Lamborghini engine, the satisfying click of a Montblanc pen cap, or the ethereal music in a Dior perfume commercial, these sounds are not by-products. They are carefully designed elements of the brand’s identity, telling a story about its values, precision, and attention to detail.
The power of sonic branding
Sonic branding creates a unique auditory signature that can be as recognizable as a visual logo. It’s a powerful tool for differentiation, especially in the luxury market where brands strive to create an emotional connection. Sound evokes strong emotions and memories, making it uniquely suited to leave a lasting impression.
Take Burberry. Known for its association with British music, Burberry collaborates with emerging and established British musicians for its campaigns and runway shows - promoting the artists while aligning the house with the British music scene and strengthening its identity.
The role of music in luxury branding
Music is an essential tool for creating a distinct brand identity and a memorable customer experience. It’s not about selecting a catchy tune; it’s about curating an auditory landscape that aligns with the brand’s ethos, enhances its narrative, and resonates with a discerning audience.
Used effectively, music transforms a product into a complete sensory experience. It sets the mood, evokes emotion, and tells a story that words or visuals alone cannot convey. Luxury houses commission bespoke soundtracks for campaigns, fashion shows, and in-store experiences - custom compositions that add exclusivity and sophistication. Chanel and Dior have commissioned live orchestras for their shows, creating multisensory grandeur that stays with the audience long after the lights come up.
With digital media and streaming, houses now extend their sonic identity through branded playlists and partnerships - music has become a strategic tool for differentiation, engagement, and storytelling.
The sound of luxury in a digital world
For its Spring-Summer 2020 show, Louis Vuitton commissioned a unique score from Bryce Dessner; combined with the staging, it created a brand experience both luxurious and contemporary. Dior’s J’adore commercial used London Grammar’s “Hey Now” - an ethereal sound that perfectly matched the perfume’s sophistication.
The quiet luxury of product sound
Before any campaign music plays, the product has already spoken. The weighted click of a Montblanc cap, the muffled, pressurized thud of a luxury car door, the almost silent glide of a drawer in a couture boutique - none of these sounds are accidents. Premium houses engineer them deliberately, because the ear runs a quality inspection the eye cannot: we infer density, precision, and care from sound in a fraction of a second, and no amount of visual polish overrides a cheap-sounding click. This is sonic branding at its most invisible and most persuasive - identity embedded in the object itself. It is also where the discipline is heading at the top of the market: as electric vehicles arrive with no engine note at all, entire acoustic identities are being composed from scratch, and the houses that treat product sound as design will own a channel their competitors never thought to enter.
From playlist to identity
Most luxury brands already use music; very few own any. The difference is curation versus commissioning. A curated playlist borrows other people’s identities - tasteful, but interchangeable, and gone the moment a rival curates the same mood. A commissioned identity is composed from the house’s own DNA and compounds with every exposure: the same musical signature threading through films, shows, boutiques, and digital spaces until the sound alone summons the brand. The houses cited in this essay - Vuitton commissioning Dessner, Chanel staging orchestras - understood this long ago: they stopped renting recognition and started building it. That path, from first analysis to a sound no one else can use, is exactly what I map out in the complete guide to sonic branding.
The science behind sonic branding
This isn’t only an artistic choice - it’s rooted in science. Our brains process sound faster than visuals, and auditory stimuli trigger emotional responses more effectively. Research on sonic logos shows their acoustic features - intensity, pitch, pace - measurably attract attention and transmit brand personality: fast-paced sonic logos raise emotional arousal, while slow, long ones calm the listener’s heart rate.
How to audit your brand’s sound in an afternoon
For any brand leader reading this and wondering where their own house stands, the first diagnosis costs nothing but honesty. Collect the touchpoints: your last three campaign films, your website, your event footage, your on-hold audio, even the sounds your product makes in use. Run the mute test in reverse: play everything with the screen off - could a stranger tell these belong to the same brand? Could they tell they belong to a luxury brand at all? Test congruence: does what you hear match the adjectives on the first page of your brand book - or does a house selling permanence sound like a trending playlist? Listen to the neighbors: play your category competitors the same way; in most sectors you will find they are all drawing from the same three moods, which means distinctiveness is sitting there unclaimed. Write the gap list: every touchpoint where the sound is borrowed, generic, or absent. That list is the brief - and in my experience it is rarely longer than a page, which is exactly why the fix is more attainable than most brands assume.
The future
Technology is opening the door to immersive, personalized sonic experiences - and as voice platforms become the front door to brands, how a brand sounds will shape perception as much as how it looks. The challenge is real: a sonic identity must be unique, memorable, and consistent. But the opportunity is bigger - deeper emotional connection, and true differentiation in a crowded market.
The question is no longer just what a luxury brand looks like. It’s what it sounds like. How the houses answer it in practice - from runway commissions to retail psychology - is the subject of the role of music in luxury branding; and when the sound is built from the product itself, as it was for TARO ISHIDA, the identity stops being a soundtrack and becomes a signature.