Love it or hate it – how distinctive ads and sonic branding work

One of the key metrics in advertising is ‘ad recall’… how many people remember the ad. Yet does that necessarily mean the ad is being remembered in a positive light? Definitely not – there’s a campaign that’s been running for ages that gives many people (the author included) the ick every time they see – or more precisely – hear it. Domino’s “Domin-oh-hoo-hoo” is now etched into the nation’s psyche and is a prime example of a brand using sonic branding to build brand association and recall.

Sonic branding is hardly new, but the Domino’s yodel is a particularly good example of why distinctive advertising doesn’t necessarily need to be universally liked in order to be effective. Marketers understandably want people to like their advertising – nobody sits in a creative meeting hoping to produce something that half the audience finds annoying – yet likeability and effectiveness aren’t necessarily the same thing. Domino’s have won an IPA Effectiveness Award for this work and reported that the activity contributed to millions of additional orders – so it’s clearly been massively successful. Whether people love it or hate it, they certainly remember it.

Marmite made hatred part of the brand

Marmite pushed the concept a little further. Instead of merely accepting that some people didn’t like their product, they built one of Britain’s most enduring advertising ideas around the fact it split the room.

Some people love Marmite and others absolutely hate it. Rather than quietly concentrating on the first group, in 1996 BMP DDB turned that division into Love it or hate it. Nearly three decades later, describing something as “Marmite” has become shorthand for something polarising. That’s an extraordinary achievement in terms of brand marketing; to notice something genuinely distinctive about people’s relationship with your product or brand and then amplifying it to the next level with amazing success.

Marmite subsequently stretched the idea into campaigns about neglected jars being rescued from cupboards and even whether DNA determines if people are born Marmite lovers or haters. Instead of sanding down the difficult bit of the brand, it kept finding new ways to celebrate it.

When irritating advertising becomes distinctive

Go Compare offers another variation on the theme. Gio Compario, the moustachioed opera singer endlessly singing “Go Compare”, became so irritating that the company eventually ran advertising in which people tried to get rid of him. Annoying as you like, yet everybody knew who he belonged to. And that matters. Distinctive advertising isn’t simply about producing something unusual enough to attract attention, the art is in is creating something that people associate unmistakably with your brand. Whether it’s Gio Compario, the Netflix “ta-dum” or the Intel bong (apparently that is what it’s called), these audible snippets become constant reminders – conscious or subconscious – of their respective brands.

None of this means marketers should deliberately set out to annoy people. Being irritating without being memorable or recognisable is unlikely to be much of a strategy. But it does suggest that being universally inoffensive isn’t necessarily the objective either.

For businesses hiring within brand and product marketing or creative, content and social marketing, it goes to show that it’s important to remember it’s not all about focussing on channels that have the most easily trackable metrics, conversion rates and so on, and that building brand awareness still has its place. And that when doing that, distinctiveness sometimes holds sway over pleasing everyone: would most brands rather create ads everybody quite likes but nobody remembers or ads some people hate but everybody knows is theirs?