Sonic Branding: Why Sound Matters in Luxury & Experience Design

There’s a particular click that means something to those who know. The bright, crystalline ping of an S.T. Dupont lighter opening—a sound born not from marketing or mechanics, but accident. In the 1940s, when the first Ligne 1 models were made, an engineering quirk in the lid created a high, bell-like note. It had no purpose. Yet owners noticed. The “ping” became a symbol of precision and elegance — the sound of a perfect seal, of materials meeting just so.By the 1970s Dupont’s engineers were tuning for it deliberately, refining the pitch to a near-musical tone. Today the company even produces “Perfect Ping” editions, designed for optimum clarity, the acoustic equivalent of a flawless polish. What began as incidental became elemental; an auditory mark of authenticity recognised across generations.It’s a small story, but telling. Sound, when it’s right, doesn’t just accompany an experience; it is the experience. A lighter’s click, a door’s thunk, a glass’s chime — these micro-moments carry as much brand equity as any logo. They’re sensory signatures that communicate craft and spirit in equal measure. The First SenseHumans are born into sound. Before sight, before language, hearing connects us to the world. Research shows that fetuses begin to perceive rhythm and tone months before birth, their developing brains responding to musical structure like a form of rehearsal for life itself. Our first sense is therefore not sight, but listening.Sound, too, is the quickest route to emotion. Whereas visual information must be processed and interpreted, auditory stimuli take a faster path, lighting up the limbic system—the part of the brain governing memory and feeling. It’s why a few notes can make us nostalgic, anxious or joyful before we’ve had time to reason.That intimacy explains why audio often feels more personal than text. The difference between a voice note and a message isn’t just format, it’s humanity. Tone, breath, hesitation—the qualities that can’t be typed—carry sentiment in their own frequency. Sound is communication at its most elemental.In branding, that instinctive link between ear and emotion is largely under-used. Most brands still treat audio as garnish. Yet sound, like scent, is a powerful form of memory architecture. It lodges deeper, lasts longer, and travels faster than any image. The Age of ListeningAfter decades of visual dominance, culture has tuned its ear again. Audio now underpins how we move through the day—the playlist that sets a morning’s pace, the podcast that fills a commute, the background hum that makes focus possible. Spotify’s Culture Next report notes that nearly three-quarters of millennials now consider audio the most immersive medium. That’s not a fringe habit; it’s a cultural rewiring.Institutions are catching on. In London, 180 Studios’ Reverb exhibition explored the intersection of art and acoustics, while the Barbican’s Feel the Sound invited visitors to “embrace a world of listening.” In Seoul, the Audeum Audio Museum opened as the first institution dedicated solely to sound equipment, its architecture designed as an instrument in itself.Brands, too, are rediscovering the emotional economy of sound. Loewe’s short film of its Puzzle Bag workshop, pairing the scrape of leather with Chopin’s Waltz in B minor, drew millions of views. The Silver Cup, a Hertfordshire pub, scored its own kitchen—chalk on board, knives on stone, pints poured —and produced something quietly moving. Both proved that the noises of creating can be as emotive as the finished product.Travel, perhaps more than any sector, has embraced the sonic shift. Singapore Airlines’ sonic identity—a trilogy of ten-minute compositions for lounge, boarding and landing—translates the geometry of its batik motif into music that carries passengers from anticipation to arrival. A continuous auditory thread through the journey.JW Marriott’s partnership with California’s Flamingo Estate takes it further. Guests encounter a garden-infused scent, a bespoke honey blend, and a sound programme titled Aurora, Sun, Dusk and Moon—playlists designed to mirror circadian rhythm and the moods of the day. CitizenM, meanwhile, collaborated with record label Erased Tapes and neuroscientists at Goldsmiths to produce Brainwaves, a trio of compositions scientifically tuned to reduce anxiety, aid focus or encourage sleep.Elsewhere, Aman Tokyo layers its spa experiences with ambient city recordings—sirens, wind, birds—transformed into meditative soundscapes that paradoxically make escape from the metropolis more complete. The Four Seasons in London offers sound baths to soothe “high-octane lifestyles.” And Marriott Bonvoy has turned its destinations into aural postcards: field recordings from Japan to Fiji introducing travellers to a place before they arrive.The same sensibility is reshaping retail. Across Asia, listening bars and vinyl lounges are reviving the flagship as social hub. Jakarta’s Space Available combines meditation space with a vinyl bar; Beijing’s Page One merges library and listening room. Even fashion is amplifying its soundtrack: Alexander McQueen’s series, also titled Reverb, reimagined the brand’s London roots through curated vinyl sessions. In a recent recording for What The Luxe, we sat down with Rami Elganar of White Mirror Studios—a designer who treats listening as a form of transformation. He described a sauna the studio built where heat, light and sound work in unison: a space that teaches people to listen deeply. Sensors track the movements of rescued birds outside, translating them into a generative soundscape that shifts as they do. For twenty minutes, guests sit in silence, sweat, and sound—a mindfulness ritual disguised as design experiment. It’s a reminder that even the simplest spaces can become instruments, and that the discipline of listening might be one of the most radical design tools we have.Not all examples are as serene. Nike and Vans’ Milan Design Week installations borrowed from nightclubs, using shifting sound to transform mood and movement—reminders that disobedience, too, has a sound. In London, private members’ club KOKO hosted a “deep listening immersion” led by Aphex Twin, his ambient electronica reframing sonic healing as something more subversive than spa-like.What’s clear is that we’ve entered a period where sound is cultural capital again. From the experimental to the everyday, the world has started listening—overtly and intentionally.These aren’t gimmicks; they’re evolutions of a simple truth. When it comes to designing experience, sound defines pace and perception. It signals when to rest, when to anticipate, when to remember. Like light or scent, it frames atmosphere, and thus memory. When Sound Changes BehaviourIf the cultural landscape has learned to listen again, the science has been telling us why all along. Sound doesn’t simply decorate experience; it directs it.In one well-known study from 1999, psychologists North, Hargreaves and McKendrick found that when French music played in a supermarket, customers overwhelmingly chose French wine. Switch to German music, and sales flipped accordingly. The effect wasn’t huge, but it was consistent — proof that even background audio can nudge behaviour without conscious awareness. Earlier research by Ronald Milliman reached a similar conclusion: slow-tempo music made shoppers linger longer and spend more; fast music hurried them through.Context matters. A Harvard meta-study found that congruence between what we see and what we hear intensifies memory and emotion many times over. That’s why a sonic logo works best when it reflects the feeling a brand already owns. Sound doesn’t create emotion out of nothing; it crystallises what’s already there.Luxury brands, of course, have always known this. They’ve long used acoustics as an extension of material quality—a way to make craftsmanship audible. Rolls-Royce engineers spend months calibrating the exact sound of their doors closing, ensuring the thunk feels heavy, solid, reassuring. In its electric models, that same sensation is maintained through silence: battery mass doubling as sound insulation, the absence of noise engineered into presence. Hans Zimmer was even commissioned to compose the electric tone for the Spectre, a low, ethereal hum described as a “cathedral glide.” It’s grandeur translated into frequency.At the other end of the spectrum, Dyson’s vacuums have been acoustically tuned to evoke jet engines rather than domestic droning. The message is power, not chores. Apple takes a similar approach, designing not only its product sounds but its packaging’s hush—the controlled sigh of an iPhone box opening, the barely audible friction of precision tolerances. Even silence becomes a statement of design. Krug Champagne treats sound as theatre. Each cuvée is launched with its own composition, sometimes performed live in immersive spaces that surround guests in low, resonant tones. The music isn’t background; it’s narrative—time and terroir made audible. Brazilian beauty house Natura went one step further, recording the bioelectric signals of Amazonian trees and turning them into melody, producing a sonic identity rooted in the literal energy of its environment.When Aston Martin’s Chief Creative Officer joined What The Luxe, he spoke with a clarity rare in the conversation around automotive sound. For him, sound should be equated to purpose—the rush of wind through a glider’s chamber, the reverberation that makes motion visceral. Artificially pumped engine noise, he argued, only erodes that connection. True sonic design is about eliciting emotion through authenticity, not simulation. The combustion roar of a V12 makes hairs rise because it’s elemental, not engineered; a mechanical symphony that mirrors our primal response to power. As electrification advances, Aston Martin’s challenge isn’t necessarily volume but integrity; to compose excitement from movement itself rather than artifice. It’s an insight that extends far beyond cars: when brands design sound as a function of truth, it resonates more deeply than any manufactured signature ever could. Sound as ValueAcross all of these examples, a single truth holds: sound creates meaning through context. Incongruent audio confuses; coherent audio completes. When designed with care, it deepens memory, smooths transitions and amplifies perceived quality. When ignored, it leaves an invisible gap where emotion should be.For brands, that perception compounds. The right sound signals intention; the wrong one exposes neglect. The difference between premium and ordinary can rest on a single note—the line between Dupont’s ping and a dull click.Our CEO once wrote that Ring should talk to Brian Eno to make doorbells that sound better than a ’90s Nokia. He wasn’t being flippant. The point was that most domestic sound design feels accidental, when it could be intimate. Half of London’s doorbells, he noted, sound like losing a game of Tetris. Yet within that complaint lies an opportunity: a personal sonic signature for the home. Imagine being guided through the process of designing your own doorbell tone—a small ritual of authorship, a modern signet. In an age of smart everything, such gestures restore individuality. More than announcing presence, it says something about the people who live there.As with scent, the subtlety is the strength. Our previous piece, Why Scent Matters, explored how smell ties memory to emotion; sound performs the same task in time rather than space. Where scent imprints, sound conducts. Together, they form the rhythm and recall of experience—the architecture of brand worlds that can be felt without being seen.For Matter Of Form, that’s where our craft lies: designing for the senses we forget to consider, so brands don’t just look different but sound alive. To gain insight into how our multi-disciplinary teams can deliver multi-sensory experience design for your brand or business, get in touch with one of our consultants via hello@matterofform.com. Part of our series on sensorial branding, an examination of sound as luxury’s invisible signature. The detail that turns experience into feeling, and design into memory, from the crystalline ping of a Dupont lighter to the engineered hush of a Rolls-Royce.

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Sonic Branding: Why Sound Matters