EE Launch Sonic Brand Identity

Original Music Score by Radium Audio

Leading global brand agency Wolff Olins contact Radium to discuss creating a sonic brand package for “one of the biggest technology launches the UK has ever seen”. Highly intrigued, we delve into the codenamed brief, shrouded in secrecy, to eventually find that we’ve actually been working on the sonic brand identity package for Everything Everywhere’s “EE” network launch, an historic occasion given that this will be the first 4G service available to public in the UK.

Despite essentially being a technical product, EE is all about connecting people at much greater speeds with more seamless integration of networks and devices than ever before, and so it’s important that their sonic identity expresses a very human soul. The message must focus around the user rather than the technology, because in the world of EE, it’s not so much about the product itself, but the way in which this new technology makes a genuine experiential difference when users incorporate 4G into their daily routines.

So we imagine a base melody and shape a soundtrack around it which is accessible, warm, optimistic, and a little lighthearted, to create just the right emotional backdrop. To add quirkiness and flair, we experiment with human voice recordings and use our proprietary sound software developed inhouse to manipulate these various ways, both for inclusion in the brand soundtrack and also to build sound layers for the music theme paths and versions, and mnemonic options from which the final assets will be chosen.

Listen to a selection of development stage assets, and the final mnemonic from our creative exploration of the EE sonic universe below

EE Sonic Logo

After all of the initial work developing ideas, moodboards and briefs for the sonic brand identity, and the initial audio development stage, some of the final animations and videos become available. So we can now explore how the sound universe and theme music would work with the visual assets, and shape some ideas to picture. It is very important for the main theme music, the sound design, and the sound logo, to feel as if they are all part of the same world. To ensure this, we have already done a great deal of development, recording voiceover artists and singers, manipulating those recordings to merge with sound design and music with our own bespoke internal software, and developing theme music and sound logo material, so we will have plenty of great options available when we begin to work to picture in the final stages.

We now have a large suite of warm, friendly, human connection oriented sound and music assets for the brand client to workshop and select from. Initial deliverables included main brand theme music and sonic logo for the brand launch. Later expansion projects included other touchpoints including telephone on hold music, podcast theme music remix and atmospheres, a ringtone, and music remixes for instore play.

Listen to some of the sound and music explorations to picture below.