Stand Out with Audio Branding – Jodi Krangle’s Insights

You can find Jodi Krangle at:
Website: https://voiceoversandvocals.com/
Podcast: https://voiceoversandvocals.com/podcast/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodikrangle/ 

#KrisWard
#AudioBranding
#StandOutWithSound

Jodi Krangle Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day, and I am your host host Kris Ward and today in the house we have Jodi Krangle and she is a voice actor. This is very interesting to me. Now what she’s going to do is we’re going to dive into a number of topics that really can heavily impact your business. What is audio branding and how powerful sound can be and strange facts about sound. So let’s just get to it. Welcome to the show, Jodi.

[00:00:25] Jodi Krangle: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it, Kris.

[00:00:28] Kris Ward: Oh, we’re excited. This is a very unique topic. Okay. I personally think this is one of these topics that we take for granted.

[00:00:35] Jodi Krangle: Oh, definitely.

[00:00:37] Kris Ward: When we start talking about it, it makes sense, but then at the same time, you’re like, Oh, you just, I think when done well.

[00:00:43] We overlook it. I think it is a powerful tool in all, when you hear chimes and you know that’s the NBC chime on TV or the Netflix thing when you turn on your Netflix. But yet we we, I think we overlook it and take it for granted. So as business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, what we don’t know what we don’t know, where do we start? What can we even have auto audio branding when you’re a smaller business?

[00:01:08] Jodi Krangle: You totally can. I think the biggest thing to understand is what emotion you want to evoke in your clients. Okay. Okay. So if you think about the, a lot of people you’re probably working with right now already have a visual logo.

[00:01:21] They just haven’t thought about the audio end of that. And yeah, so what you would do is you would look at the colors that you’re using in your logo, the how casual or professional it is, the emotions that you want to evoke. What do you want people to feel when they experience your logo, your business, what you do?

[00:01:42] If it’s like saying in the case of yours, relief, Transcribed what other emotions are involved, right? What colors do you use in your logo and what emotions do those evoke? So if you think about those, then you can go from what emotion does it evoke to what sound evokes that emotion?

[00:02:02] Kris Ward: Yeah. That makes sense to me. So yeah, we were all about, I wanted even my book to give people hope and energize and I didn’t want people sometimes put me under the category of productivity, but to me that sounds like Weight Watchers, like a diet, right? Yeah. Yeah. And when we. When you get time back in your business and you get your life back and all that stuff, and you have a business that supports your life instead of consuming it, to me, it’s like a new day.

[00:02:23] So the book, the cover is like this yellow of sun, sunrise and energy. And even though this podcast is really all different topics, not about the main frame of what we do, but I do think that the, the tune at the beginning of this podcast is very energizing because that’s the thing. I talk about energy management versus time management.

[00:02:43] So I think to your point, I think I was doing those things before stumbling upon them by luck. So unconsciously. Yeah, sure. And or seeing them as isolated incidences like, Oh, I, every podcast does have music. I have to have one, so I’ll pick it. But when you now just said something I thought was very powerful, when we go from the, oh, we all have a logo and a brand, it’s almost if you have a visual and maybe you’re a baking product or some sort of store, you also want to have a smell, it’s a different sense. You know what I mean? So very much okay. So that’s really interesting. We have a brand and this is just another tool in the brand belt.

[00:03:22] Jodi Krangle: Yes. So think of it also as not only what are your clients going to feel, but what do you feel? How do you feel to your clients? Who are you?

[00:03:36] So what you want is you want the Venn diagram between who you are and what emotions you want your clients to feel when they’re working with you.

[00:03:44] Kris Ward: Okay. Now, where does that begin and end? We have a signature sound when we start the podcast. Would I then, and maybe I’m not sure if this is in your elm, if this is taking a sidestep and not in your area of expertise, sure.

[00:03:58] Meaning if I’m doing videos on social media, is each video, I’m using that sound for an independent story? And so it’s a different scene and I want to have a different emotion, or should I sometimes have a sound that’s going to be part of every video as part of my brand sound? I would think you’d want something that you use consistently over time that, that represents your brand and the emotions you want your audience to feel.

[00:04:27] Jodi Krangle: Yeah, stick with it because part of audio branding is consistent repetition. Okay. Okay. That’s how brands brand sounds are remembered. And when they’re remembered, they become comfortable. And then when they become comfortable, then your clients become comfortable working with you because they know who you are just by listening.

[00:04:50] Kris Ward: So in one hand, I was about to say does it, we sometimes get this false sense of, does it really matter? I’m just a little brand. Do we need this? It’s not like when you hear the HBO logo, like I can hear the HBO logo. And when I hear that, I remember hearing it really, frankly, for the first time I watched a full series on HBO or I paid extra for HBO, like I associated with that memory, but I was thinking that’s a bigger thing.

[00:05:13] But really what we’re doing, like every other aspect of our brand is we’re creating a sense of familiarity.

[00:05:19] Jodi Krangle: Exactly. Yes. And when you can remember, advertising is great unless you can’t remember who the brand is that did the advertising, right? So a great way to learn how to advertise yourself and get into the minds of the people you’re trying to reach is through sound.

[00:05:38] And it’s going to set you apart. That’s the thing I think that not many people really understand. Yes, you’re right, a lot of small brands do not use sound. They should, because this is what’s going to set them apart. So it doesn’t have to cost a huge amount of money, but say if I don’t know if you actually paid a musician to write your intro music.

[00:06:00] If you got it. Okay. Okay. So most, I got it off something. It was free, like a free. I totally get it. Okay. Yeah. And that’s exactly how I did it in the beginning too. But if you can actually talk to a musician who can get who you are. And the type of people you want to reach and evoke that in a piece of music that would be hopeful and relieving at the same time, then you’d have your own piece of music.

[00:06:26] That’s part of your own branding that you could then use in part or in full in whatever it is you’re doing, and that can brand you and whatever you put out there in content media.

[00:06:39] Kris Ward: Okay. Is it hard being you? Because most of us are overlooking this and you’re right. We all spend, no matter when the business starts, you spend money making your logo.

[00:06:48] In fact, probably too much money because it’s not relevant right in the beginning. And we’re not talking about this at all. Do you go through the world hearing all these abrupt sounds that you’re like, this is wrong. Is it relaxing being you?

[00:07:00] Jodi Krangle: I do. And it hurts.

[00:07:04] Kris Ward: Cause I have never heard this I know, like I said, that big businesses will have the chimes of the NBC channel or something like that other than a few things.

[00:07:14] I’ve never thought about this. Yeah. Even we’re in Canada, so I’m listening to a lot of banks and their ATMs are woefully unsounded. It just drives me nuts. It’s the perfect place to put that kind of a calming thing. And yet they just don’t do it. I think TD is trying and they worked with an audio branding company called CesiumSong, which is absolutely like one of the best audio branding companies out there.

[00:07:46] And I love what they did, but I want them to use it more. Okay. I see. Okay. So that’s a really good point. So instead of going into the ATM machine and you’re feeling stressed cause you’re dealing with banking or you don’t have enough funds or whatever the emotion is with banking, if we can associate that with a calm or soothing sound, yeah.

[00:08:07] Then that, cause, and maybe I am stressed, maybe my stress is a level seven and they can get me down to a level three, even take a breath. So even managing me would be helpful. Just the sounds that are meant to reassure you that what you’re trying to do at that ATM machine is actually happening. Okay.

[00:08:25] Jodi Krangle: Those should be more part of the brand and stress relieving but also think about on hold. Because we’re talking about stress here. Yeah. So think about what your company sounds like when people are waiting on the phone for you to take their call.

[00:08:42] Kris Ward: Okay. Let me jump in there for a second.

[00:08:44] So many of us, I never take a call with the client cause we’re my clients around the world, but I will say two things. I do love that when you call Apple, you get a choice of four and I don’t know if that’s branding, but I always pick the fourth one, which is no music. I don’t need to hear that. Yes.

[00:08:58] Yeah, that’s fine. But I think to your earlier point, I know back to when you go to put a debit card or a visa into a machine, like you’re at the grocery store, you’re buying something. It still stresses me. They used to have a sound if the card was declined.

[00:09:13] Jodi Krangle: Yes.

[00:09:13] Kris Ward: Now they have a sound. It’s the same sound if it doesn’t go through.

[00:09:16] So sometimes it doesn’t go through the cash register, didn’t, the cashier didn’t do something. Oh, my card is expired. A whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with the fact that. I do or do not have money. And my heart always skips a beat when I see that, hear that noise. Yeah. Oh my gosh, what happened?

[00:09:33] And I’m like, no, this, I have money in there. I promise. Oh no, you just didn’t slide the card in all the way. And yes, need to change that sound. Cause you just stressed me out.

[00:09:41] Jodi Krangle: So here’s something to think about in hospitals, the beeps that we hear on all those machines are exactly like that ATM thing where they don’t need to be alarming.

[00:09:53] They’re just telling you something happened.

[00:09:56] It’s not that you’re having a heart attack. Something is just being monitored. And yet, all of the sounds in the hospital are making you stressed out because you think something is wrong. Because all of those machines are making the same alarming sounds. Or when they’re alarming, they’re way more alarming and it gets the stress level up here.

[00:10:20] So no wonder people’s blood pressure is through the roof. No wonder people can’t sleep. This is something else that I’ve talked about, especially on my podcast with some people who are in healthcare but one of the things that we need to pay attention to is the sound in our environment and how stressful that is for us in general.

[00:10:40] Noise, sound pollution, really, is also something to pay attention to. We can’t heal ourselves in a hospital environment if we can’t sleep, or if we can’t be calm. Or, any number of things are stressing us out over there. Who wants to stay in a hospital when you’re being stressed constantly? And who wants to work in it?

[00:11:03] Kris Ward: Yeah, I get you. Okay. So we could talk all day, but it goes down so many paths. So what I would say is, then let’s bring it back again to the business owner. So I would try to have either a custom sound or whatever sound right now to have that consistent in my videos, right?

[00:11:21] Where else would I, is there other places I could be using consistency in my brand?

[00:11:25] Jodi Krangle: There are a lot of people who do speaking engagements. If there’s a song that plays you on to the stage, then you could totally use it there. Also for webinars. So every time. Exactly. Webinars. If they happen to have an on hold, it could be on the on hold music.

[00:11:42] There’s all sorts of places that this can be. And it doesn’t have to be the whole song either. If you’re using it on a podcast and say, you want to go from one segment to another segment, you could use a portion of it to play into this segment and then another portion to play out of it.

[00:11:58] Kris Ward: Okay. Now, back to branding or sound, let’s say I do speaking gigs and things like that.

[00:12:03] So would it again be my sound or would you be like, okay, I’m going to play whatever song, ABC as I walk on stage for the next five years, it’s a song that ever the Rocky anthem or whatever. Yeah. You know what I mean? Do you still. Is that part of branding? It’s that’s the energy I want from that crowd or when I’m speaking or now I’m borrowing somebody else’s song, it’s not effective.

[00:12:27] Jodi Krangle: I’d say the latter. While it does help, I think in the moment, and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with wanting to rile up the people that are going to listen to you. And that’s a good thing. I think if you want to be remembered for your audio brand, it has to be yours.

[00:12:45] Kris Ward: Okay. That makes sense.

[00:12:46] Jodi Krangle: ’cause otherwise you’re borrowing from whatever it is the band did, yeah. Like for instance,

[00:12:52] Kris Ward: and know some people’s memories with that.

[00:12:53] Jodi Krangle: Yes, exactly. It’s not yours. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like you said, the memory is for something else entirely. It has nothing to do with you.

[00:13:00] Yeah. And. And beyond that, for big brands who are using licensed music, they’re going through sync licensing and paying a lot of money for this. If the band, some member of the band does something that you don’t want associated with your brand

[00:13:17] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:13:17] Jodi Krangle: Then you’re already associated with it.

[00:13:20] And whatever memories though, that band induced in people is what you’re really getting. You’re not really getting yours.

[00:13:28] Kris Ward: That is happening a lot these days. I also find when I’m doing a coaching, the top of every slideshow, I have a quote. And now when I go to a quote, I’m like, Oh, I can’t use that. Oh, that guy.

[00:13:39] Oh, he’s been arrested. Oh my gosh. We found out he’s a horrible human being.

[00:13:45] Jodi Krangle: Yes. Yeah.

[00:13:46] Kris Ward: Okay. All right, so that makes total sense, understanding that this is a whole element of branding that creates emotion and memory and consistency, right? Yeah. The branding part. So this is such a unique conversation. Give us some strange facts about sound now that we’re really just opening our mind to the power of this.

[00:14:05] Jodi Krangle: I spoke with Steve Keller, for instance, Steve Keller is the sonic strategy director over at Sirius XM. So he’s the one who was responsible for Pandora and SoundCloud and like a whole bunch of Sirius XM in general, and they have a advertising branch Studio Resonate. That’s what it’s called. Studio Resonate. So Studio Resonate does advertising for brands. And in general, they are trying to be as innovative with sound as possible. So one of the things that they did was they did some branding and promotional stuff for a brand.

[00:14:39] So it’s like a Gatorade drink. Propel. Propel. That’s what it’s called. So Propel okay, so So Propel is an American drink. It’s in the American market and it is a very Gatorade like drink. So it’s a electrolyte drink. So it’s, it can be salty.

[00:14:56] It can be sweet, that kind of idea. And they had set up. Like pods, like areas where you could listen in headphones and scroll through an iPad, and you could dial in with what you were hearing, how much salt you wanted in the drink, or how much sweet you wanted in the drink, just by the iPad, like what you were listening to in your ears.

[00:15:20] So the listening to the music changed the kind of if I’m watching the food channel and they’re cooking stuff and suddenly I’m like you know what, I would normally not eat that. But if you were here right now, I would have a piece of that deep fried chicken, right? Exactly.

[00:15:32] Kris Ward: So what I call food porn.

[00:15:33] Jodi Krangle: But more than that.

[00:15:34] Kris Ward: Okay. So now we got the audio can impact our appetite really?

[00:15:39] Jodi Krangle: It can impact how we taste. How we experience taste. So the really so this was demonstrated also another fellow that I interviewed Pavle Marinkovic is his name. He has a book out that talks about the sound impact on food.

[00:15:58] In our, like the whole cycle from growing food to eating food to disposing of food. And it’s a really interesting book. And so what he talked about, what was that he did an experiment on chocolate and it was fairly middle of the road, slightly bitter chocolate. So it was like a darker chocolate and he had people listened to music in their headphones while they were tasting this chocolate and then he’d give them another piece of chocolate and have them listen to different music and ask them what their experience of the taste profile was.

[00:16:38] And what he found was that lower music tended to enhance the bitterness and higher toned music like piano and flute and that kind of stuff tended to get them feeling or experiencing more sweet.

[00:16:58] And they’ve done this with beer, people who want to dial in the bitterness and beer so you can listen to certain things in your ears and your taste buds experience taste in a different way.

[00:17:09] Kris Ward: Isn’t that interesting? Because you would think you get the feeling of almost what your expectation should be.

[00:17:13] So if you go into the ambience of a restaurant, there’s a little bit less light and softer spoken and all this, and you’re expecting some sort of elegance or for them not to slap a hamburger and fries in front of you. Because you have been conditioned that these sounds are associated with these experiences. But what you’re saying is it takes it to a whole new level and can impact the your taste.

[00:17:35] Jodi Krangle: It totally can.

[00:17:36] Kris Ward: Your perception, at least what you think you’re tasting, right?

[00:17:38] Jodi Krangle: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And also the music that is played in these restaurants, for instance, can decide whether you eat more quickly or slower, whether you drink more or don’t, how much of a party atmosphere it is.

[00:17:54] If you go into a party atmosphere, you’re more inclined to eat more crunchy foods and you’re more inclined to drink. These kinds of things, right? So people who are in the restaurant business should also very much be paying attention to this kind of thing, because you can influence the type of patrons you have and what they order by the environment that you provide. And that environment, a lot of it is sound.

[00:18:19] Kris Ward: Okay. I saw the obvious stuff. If you go into a spa and you’re getting massaged and they play that suit, but you just thought that’s an obvious pairing, but I think too, I, people describe me as having high energy and a lot of my clients are like that because you tracked who you are.

[00:18:36] And so I deal with people who are very capable and high functioning. And the problem is they were often the go to person for a lot of people in their life. And so then when they think, Oh, there’s just too much work, I can’t manage it because I get more done than anybody. And that’s their perception until we show them that there’s things you can put in play to get time back and all that stuff.

[00:18:53] In previous years, I was always trying to downplay my energy because I thought maybe it comes off more juvenile, less professional, but now if it is who I am and I accepted, you don’t edit who you are, you just put it out there, then I would be wanting music and tones like the podcast beginning here to, to pair with my energy because I do believe it’s about energy management.

[00:19:15] It’s not about time management. You want to be able to do the same things at three o’clock in the afternoon that you could do in the morning because you shouldn’t be depleting as the day goes on, right? Yes. So it really echoes and magnifies the message of the brand as well.

[00:19:29] Jodi Krangle: Definitely. Yeah. I think that is something to pay attention to. Yeah. Your personality should come out in the sound that you use. It’s almost like you’re in this underground world. Like I don’t know, like it’s almost like the first time I scuba dived and I found that there’s this whole world underneath that I, like all this stuff is happening that looks like nothing on the surface.

[00:19:47] There’s just water and you’re probably walking around, see, hearing things and exposing the life absorbing life in a completely different way than the rest of us. In a lot of senses it can be draining.

[00:20:01] Kris Ward: Yeah. Yeah. Abrasive. Yeah.

[00:20:04] Jodi Krangle: Yeah. Yeah. It has that tendency. I am an odd person when it comes to sound though, in the way that I am a musician as well.

[00:20:13] So I’m a singer and I tend to listen to music and I tend to cut apart the parts and try and find out how it, how the sausage was made, right? Every time I hear a song, that’s what I’m listening for. So for me, when I need peace and I am a raging introvert, when I need peace, I need silence, utter silence, because if I’m listening to music, it gives me a headache.

[00:20:39] Kris Ward: I, when I’m in the car with somebody else, I don’t want the radio on cause we’re talking and I can’t like, and then there’s talking somebody singing that’s words and you’re trying to talk to me and I can’t hear you both. But it’s really interesting. My husband was very into music and he would be like, Oh, do you hear that?

[00:20:52] Listen to this. And he expected me to look at him in the eye and listen to some piece of a song. And to me, listening to music meant like it was on while I was cutting vegetables. And I’d be like, I don’t hear this and I don’t care and I didn’t even know most of the time when I was feeling emotions in movies that it was because they cued the music, right?

[00:21:10] Jodi Krangle: Yeah.

[00:21:12] Kris Ward: All that. Oh my gosh. Okay. Really fascinating stuff. So let’s use the sound. Let’s start thinking about the sound in our videos, not doing what we’ve all been trained to do is just stick any random song to any random video. So whatever is popular right now the popular in the charts, we’re adding it to a video to be relatable, but let’s have a brand sound, right? We might even have sound on our website possibly, be really careful, like how that’s curated.

[00:21:39] Jodi Krangle: I’d be very careful with sound on your website, mostly because some people will find that annoying. But you can use it in certain places and you can have videos that will play on your website when people listen.

[00:21:51] Okay. Okay. What I would also say is that your sound is actually another character in your branding arsenal, right? It’s like your logo your, the colors you use, the fonts you use on everything, the sound you use should be another aspect of that. But yeah, in movies, it’s another character.

[00:22:12] That’s how people are thinking of the music in in a movie, I know there are a lot of composers that are very famous for the specific sound that they have. And it’s because they are thinking of that music as a separate character that forwards the plot.

[00:22:30] Kris Ward: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re right about the website.

[00:22:32] Cause I remember many years ago when I still had a job and I was looking to see how much the Lion King tickets were because they were coming to my area. So I’m like, Oh, so I’m at work. Okay. I was done my work. It was lunchtime or whatever. But I clicked into the website. And at the top of its lungs, my computer went Benja Oh my God, I’m hit. I was like, Oh no.

[00:22:49] Jodi Krangle: Yeah. You don’t want it automatically.

[00:22:52] Kris Ward: That was not music we were in here. So I was like, okay, like I was traumatized. So you’re right. Be careful how you control those things. Okay. Oh my gosh, Jody, this was just really, it just now the whole world has changed for me. . Where can people find more of your brilliance? I know you hang out a lot on LinkedIn. . Is that a good place to find you?

[00:23:10] Jodi Krangle: Sure. LinkedIn, definitely. My website is voiceoversandvocals.com and the podcast where I talk about all of this stuff is audio branding. So it’s called audio branding and the, yeah, URL is audiobrandingpodcast.com.

[00:23:28] Kris Ward: Okay. We will make sure to have all that in our show notes. Great. I appreciate it. I tried to have a more soothing voice talking to you because you’ve got that really great voice, but I wasn’t able to sustain it even for a moment.

[00:23:40] Jodi Krangle: You are you and you should be you.

[00:23:43] Kris Ward: It’s all I got. I have tried. Okay. Thank you so much. Everyone else, we will see you in the next episode.

[00:23:51] Jodi Krangle: Thanks.