Financial services brands show strong sonic strategies: report

In a year that’s being defined by AI and global sporting events, it’s only getting harder for marketers to make some noise. One of the ways brands stand out is with sound—but some are leveraging audio assets more effectively than others, according to new data from amp.

In the seventh edition of its Best Audio Brands report, the sonic branding agency gave letter grades to more than 150 brands from around the world based on their sonic strategies, evaluating factors like their use of sonic logos and music in campaigns and other content in the past year.

The best-performing brands use custom sounds consistently, according to Bjorn Thorleifsson, amp’s director of research and insights, while the lower-scoring companies don’t have unique sonic strategies. While that might save them money in the short term, he said, it could ultimately negatively impact brand-building in the long run.

“It’s more about the immediate equity of a campaign, instead of the long-term equity of the brand,” Michele Arnese, amp’s founder and CEO, told Marketing Brew.

Head of the class: Many of the brands that received an “A” grade consistently use both sonic logos and custom music, as opposed to relying on stock music, Thorleifsson said. On average, about 30% of the music used by these brands is owned, according to amp. Of the brands with both A and B grades, 80% are “actively using” owned music, the company found.

• Two of the three A+ brands are in the financial services industry: Mastercard, an amp client with a detailed sonic strategy, and insurance company Swiss Re.
• Shell, another amp client, also received an A+.
• AutoZone and Lenovo got As.

Financial services and auto brands are prevalent throughout the list, and especially in the higher-letter-grade sections. Brands in those sectors might rely more on sonic branding because building trust among consumers tends to be more of a priority in their industries than in others, Thorleifsson theorized.

“Sound and music is such a good way to evoke feelings of trust and familiarity,” he said.

Middle of the pack: CPG brands including Guinness, Haribo, Heinz, Huggies, Oreo, and Pepsi have more of a presence in the “C” section of the report. They’re joined by fast-food companies like Domino’s, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, Panera, and Popeyes.

Some of those brands, including McDonald’s and Panera, have custom sonic assets, but usage of them may have dropped. The McDonald’s brand, for instance, experienced a 25% decrease in sonic logo use in 2025, according to amp.

Brands that received Cs used stock music in about two-thirds of their content, and, as a result, “sound competent but interchangeable,” amp found. Stock music can be common among brands that are particularly focused on social media and want to lean into trending sounds, Thorleifsson said.

Room for improvement: A handful of tech brands received Ds, which may come as a surprise to anyone who’s traumatized by familiar with Microsoft’s Windows startup chime or Teams notification sound.

While Microsoft products like its Copilot AI have sonic logos, the company relies mostly on unbranded music and seems to have “no unified sonic strategy across advertising or digital platforms,” the authors wrote in the report.

The generally poor sonic performance in the tech space could be a result of the sheer amount of content those companies create, including educational or how-to videos for products, in which “sound is very much an afterthought,” Thorleifsson said.

Going global: Given consumers’ ever-shortening attention spans, sparing a few seconds in an ad for a sonic logo can be an uphill battle at brands and agencies even if brands have custom sounds, Arnese told us. And much like visual assets, sounds don’t always translate on the global stage, which can limit their use.

“Sometimes the [sonic] logo works in a certain market, they don’t get the traction they want for adoption in other cultures,” he said.

At a time when many brands are looking to show up at international events like the Olympics, having a flexible sonic strategy is key, something brands can achieve even with small tweaks to their audio, Arnese said.

“It’s like Lady Gaga performing a song of Bad Bunny’s,” he said. “You have something recognizable, and you transfer [it] into a different instrumentation, into a different mood and spirit energy.”