Blog Post
The Sounds of Super Bowl LIX
The Sounds of Super Bowl LIX
Posted on
10 Feb 2025
Category
Sonic Branding in Sports
10 Feb 2025 • Sonic Branding in Sports
Super Bowl Sonic Branding
The Super Bowl is a big day for both athletes and advertisers alike. Spectators gather in bars, stadiums, and living rooms, creating a shared experience tied together by one key element—music and sound (for the first time with Dolby Atmos Support).Before the first snap, we hear a familiar sound—the network theme. Each broadcaster brings its own signature tune, whether it’s NBC, CBS, or ESPN on ABC. This year, with FOX hosting, its iconic set the stage for the big game.Next, there are the team songs. The Kansas City Chiefs continue their long-standing and controversial "war chant," while the Philadelphia Eagles rally behind their fight song, "Fly, Eagles, Fly." While you can hear them in the crowd, sang the anthem earlier on the way to New Orleans, an excellent example of user-generated audio branding content.Finally, commercials kick off the event. The highly anticipated ads aired for millions of viewers watching live on TV or streaming on Tubi and come with a price tag of about $8 million for a 30-second spot. For marketers, that can mean a minimum of half a million dollars or more worth of time reserved for audio branding assets. Yet, many producers see this as just another cost—when, in reality, a well-executed sonic identity can be one of the greatest investments in audience growth.
Super Bowl Stats
This year, 50 major brands advertised, but only around a quarter of them used sonic branding. By the numbers, the most common sonic branding asset was the audio logo category, including jingles and musical mnemonics, whereas the least common expression was UX Sounds or earcons. Most brands used stock music or licensed tracks and even created comical covers of them, such as Seal's surreal Mountain Dew debut. if you want to take your sonic branding to Super Bowl LX.
Silent Sonic Branding
Silence isn't golden. While no brand was a "loser" here, many brands missed out on the opportunity to be heard. There is an 8.5x increase in efficacy for ads using audio (), and seven brands had no sound or music. Even brands that have already invested in audio logos, such as FanDuel and Rocket Mortgage, opted to omit them from their ads. In fact, Instacart managed to pack nine mascots into their 30-second ad titled “We’re Here,” yet left no room for their own audio logo. During their Ad, the Kool-Aid Man exclaimed, "Oh, yeah!" the Energizer Bunny beat his drum, but the Old Spice whistle and Jolly Green Giant's jingle didn't make the cut. Whether Instacart’s audio logo didn’t mesh well with the music or they prioritized getting their money’s worth from licensing Take It to Da House, the brand’s sonic identity went silent.
Seamless Sonic Logos
There are more economical ways to implement sonic branding. A few brands took advantage of different techniques this year. Rather than reserving a strict set of seconds at the end of an ad, the audio logo can seamlessly integrate contextually into the commercial by placing it earlier in the content, playing only the melody, or extracting a non-tonal element to layer on top of the background music. Here are the highlights.
Duracell
The majority of sonic logos are placed at the end of ads, and Duracell is no exception. They've used their 3-note "Slamtone" at the end of most of their ads since the seventies. For the "Brady Reboost," VaynerMedia took a new approach. The classic Coppertop composition comes in during the commercial, right at the brand reveal. To cap it off, there is also a new "Power Boost" shout where the sonic logo used to play.
Disney+
Disney+ ditched the tonal element of their production logo, leaving only the skeuomorphic snap. This avoids any harmonic clashing between the audio logo and music, while still punctuating the plus symbol. The only drawback is that without the branded sonic swell, the Disney+ snap sounds too similar to the Nintendo Switch audio logo.
Nintendo Switch "Snap"
T-Mobile
T-Mobile's melody is performed contextually with the background music, saving time while reinforcing the branding. While the audio logo has recently been modernized to incorporate a more synthetic aesthetic, this treatment takes T-Mobile back to its piano roots by quoting the 5-notes on top of the final chord.
UX Sounds
The UX Sounds of the Super Bowl were even quieter this year. Only a handful of ads featured product sounds, and very few of them were real. Google featured Gemini and Google Meet sounds, while the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses commercial boasted a staggering seven branded sounds.
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses
"Hey, Meta." This invocation triggers a branded earcon four times throughout the ad, where Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt embark on a series of mishaps. The camera shutter sound is also used twice, highlighting the AI smart glasses' photo capabilities in addition to a single use of the camera record UX sound. This is a prime example of true-to-life product sounds taking center stage, proving it's not impossible to blend sonic branding into storytelling.
Post-Game Recap
Sonic branding is a big buzzword this year, but it wasn't in the playbook when it came to Super Bowl LIX. The research is there: brands that utilize strong assets, such as sonic logos, can see a +76% boost in brand power and a +138% increase in advertising strength (). Yet, only 14 out of 50 brands took advantage of the power of sonic branding. With millions of dollars on the line, brands can’t afford to leave their proven sonic assets on the sideline. The question isn’t whether sonic branding works—it’s whether brands will start treating it like the game-changer it is. Ready to gain your competitive advantage with audio?
