--- name: "sonic_branding" description: "Create a sonic identity system: audit existing sounds, write a sonic brief, translate brand words into motif and instrumentation choices, commission or generate a sonic logo and stings, settle master and composition rights and sound mark questions, master to loudness and format specs per channel, test for blind recall, and ship an asset kit that says where each sound is used. Use when building, refreshing, or fixing a brand sound, audio logo, sonic logo, sting, earcon set, or brand theme, or when a brand sounds generic or inconsistent across video, podcast, product, and events." --- # Sonic Branding ## Purpose Give a brand a sound system it can actually govern: one motif that generates the sonic logo, the short sting, the brand theme, and the product earcons, with the rights settled in writing, masters that meet the loudness spec of each channel, and an asset kit that names where every sound belongs. Ships with a brief template, an asset kit template, worked briefs at a lean budget and a full system budget, a rights and routes reference, a loudness reference, and a checker script that fails a kit with missing core assets, wrong master formats, unclear rights, or a logo that will not survive a phone speaker. A sonic logo is one line of that system, not the system. Brands that commission a lone sting get a pleasant sound and no identity, because nothing else they ship sounds related to it. This is practice guidance, not legal advice. Trademark and contract questions that carry real money go to a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction where the brand will file and trade. ## Workflow 1. **Audit before you brief.** List every place the brand already makes sound: video opens and end cards, podcast intros and ad reads, app events, notifications, hold music, live events, social clips, ads. Note what plays, who made it, and what rights paperwork exists, if any. Keep any existing sound listeners already know, or plan its retirement openly. Surprise changes to a familiar sound cost recognition you already paid for. 2. **Write the brief before anyone opens a DAW.** Use `assets/sonic-brief-template.md`. Lock these before composition starts: the brand in three words, the one feeling the mark must trigger, the worst case playback (usually a phone speaker in noise, or an earcon heard dozens of times a day), every placement the sounds must serve, the rights the deal must deliver, the approver, and the revision rounds. Pull three things out of the finished brief and hold them up at every review: the target feeling, the worst case playback, and the one cliche the work must avoid. 3. **Translate brand words into a sonic palette.** Adjectives do not compose. Convert each brand word into tempo, mode and harmony, register, rhythm density, attack shape, instrument family, texture, and spatial feel. Warm tends toward lower register, rounder attacks, and soft saturation. Crisp tends toward tight attacks, dry plucked or percussive sounds, and clean decay. Confident tends toward a stable pulse, simple harmony, and a decisive interval. Record the translation in the brief so feedback can argue with decisions, not taste. 4. **Build in system order: motif, logo, theme, earcons.** Start with the motif, a short musical idea built on one signature interval and a clear rhythm, small enough to hum and sturdy enough to stretch. Compress it into the sonic logo, aiming for 2 to 5 seconds (published guidance ranges from about 1 to 6 seconds, shorter is harder to write and easier to remember). Expand it into the brand theme, 30 to 60 seconds for intros, films, and events. Derive earcons for success, error, and notification from the same interval family, each a fraction of a second to about a second. Judge every candidate on five named decisions: pitch, timbre, motion, duration, and resolution (whether it lands settled, right for a closing placement, or open, right for a lead in). 5. **Pick the production route with rights in view.** Four routes, detailed in `references/rights-and-routes.md`: commissioned buyout, work for hire, library licence, and AI generation. For a core mark, a commissioned buyout that assigns both the master recording and the underlying composition, worldwide and perpetual, with sync, broadcast, social, product, and live use named, is the cleanest outcome. Library tracks are licensed not owned, can be licensed to rivals, and can exclude trademark use, so they fit a theme under content far better than the logo itself. AI generation fits demos and direction finding. Platform commercial permission is not copyright ownership and not a promise the output is unique, so a final AI sourced master needs a provenance log, real human authorship added, a fresh read of the current terms, and legal review before heavy rollout or a trademark filing. 6. **Test for recall, attribution, and survival, then pick.** Run a blind test: play the candidate among competitor and famous marks in the same space, let time pass, then ask listeners what they can hum or describe and which brand each sound belonged to. A mark people like but cannot recall or misattribute has failed its job. Test on a phone speaker at low volume, in mono, on a TV, and in any loud room where it will really play. Approve with one named approver, inside the revision rounds the fee bought. Endless committee rounds sand off exactly the odd edge that makes a mark distinctive. 7. **Master and build the kit.** Keep masters as WAV, 48 kHz, 24 bit, true peak at or below -1 dBTP, with no normalisation baked in. Render delivery copies inside each programme at that destination target (broadcast, podcast, online video, app, and web numbers are in `references/loudness-and-formats.md`). Fill `assets/asset-kit-template.md`: motif description, signature interval, approved keys and tempo range, primary instrumentation, sounds to avoid, one row per file saying where it is used and where it must never be used, and the kit rights status. Editors and developers work from the kit, not from memory or a chat message. 8. **Check the kit, then roll out and govern.** Write the kit manifest in the format the checker header describes and run `bin/sonic_kit_check.py`. Fix every error before rollout. Then replace sounds placement by placement from the audit list, supply partners and agencies the kit plus the spec sheet for their channel, and name one kit owner. New variants come from the motif, through the owner, into the kit. Review the kit after the first season or major campaign and retire variants nobody uses. ## Output Contract - A sonic audit list: every current sound, its placement, its source, and its rights paperwork, with keep, replace, or retire marked per item. - A filled sonic brief from `assets/sonic-brief-template.md`, with the palette translation table completed and no blank rights section. - A motif and asset plan in system order, or the finished assets: sonic logo main and short sting, brand theme, earcon set, stems, each with duration and placement named. - A rights summary per asset: route, both rights layers, territory, term, exclusivity, and trademark intent, with any `unclear` item flagged as a blocker, not a footnote. - Masters and delivery copies meeting `references/loudness-and-formats.md`, plus the completed asset kit and a passing checker run. ## Operating Rules - Brief first, sound second. Work started before the palette translation and the rights section exist gets judged on taste and paid for twice. - One motif generates everything. If the earcons, theme, and logo could each belong to a different brand, there is no identity yet, only a folder of sounds. - Both rights layers, every time. A deal silent on the composition, on territory, on term, or on trademark use is unfinished, whatever the fee was. - Loudness belongs to the programme. Never paste a sting onto a finished mix at full scale, and never judge a 3 second mark by a loudness number measured on the sting alone. - Earcons are not small logos. A sound heard dozens of times a day must be shorter, quieter, and plainer than a sound heard once at the end of a film. - Mono and phone speaker are approval gates, not nice extras. A motif that needs stereo width or sub bass to work will vanish where most people first hear it. - Distinctive beats pleasant. A mark that risks sounding odd in one specific, ownable way outperforms a mark everyone agrees is nice and nobody remembers. - Consistency builds the asset. The same mark, alone, in the same placements, repeated for a long time, is what turns a sound into recognition. Swapping marks per campaign restarts the clock at zero. - Keep AI claims honest. Say what a platform licence actually grants, log the provenance, and never tell a client an AI generated mark is exclusively theirs or ready to trademark on the strength of a paid plan alone.