With every project we are redefining sonic branding into a more holistic and strategy driven discipline, and as a result, everything we do wins gold: Marco Vitali of Sonic Lens

The Silicon Review

“Our goal is to be known as the best in our business doing the most sophisticated work, so we literally have to win gold for every project in order to get there.”

Sonic Lens is a next generation sonic branding agency that sits at the intersection of marketing and music. The agency’s ‘music intelligence’ approach can best be attributed to the uncommon path of its founder, Marco Vitali.

‘Music intelligence’ is a distillation process that marries research, data, analytics and strategy. The end result is more accurate and strategy driven creative and scalable sonic identity systems. Sonic Lens finds the right mix of ‘music intelligence’, creative and amplification to supercharge your sonic strategy and audio branding. The agency’s mission is to empower brands to become smarter and more strategic about how they use music.

Sonic Lens was founded in 2019.

The Silicon Review contacted Mr. Vitali for an interview, and here’s what he had to say.

Interview Highlights

Q. What inspired you to start this company?

After running several sonic branding agencies for other people, including my idol Nile Rodgers, I launched Sonic Lens to fill a glaring need gap in the market for a more strategic approach to sonic branding. I saw this opportunity years ago and spent many years developing a proprietary “music intelligence” process leaning on my multi-pronged background in music (Juilliard), marketing (NYU MBA), and analysis (Wall Street).

Simply put, “Brand equity” is the most valuable part of any business – more than all its assets combined, yet the sonic part of it has always been a purely creative and tactical exercise. Sonic branding agencies are great creative problem solvers, but nobody at the client, agency or music vendor is filling the consultancy role needed to develop an actual sonic strategy to guide the work. That is the role we take on, guiding our clients through the sonic branding journey from day one, sharing our analysis and helping them shape a strategy that fits everything else they’re doing. We’re talking about the master brand, so getting it right is not a choice, and strategy is the key to doing so. There is a need for translating music into strategy in a way everyone can understand and participate in, and nobody else is doing it. That’s a rare opportunity in business, so we jumped on it.

Q. What has been your biggest challenge in leading it to where it is today?

My biggest challenge has been flying under the radar as a boutique agency. We are small by design so we can focus on fewer projects, do the deep work that is required, and continue doing the best work in our field (as acknowledged by awards). The downside is we are competing mainly against the biggest established sonic agencies with strong sales and PR efforts, and we still have low awareness in the field. There are still lots of opportunities we simply don’t get to see, but I assume as we continue dominating all the awards that will change. I look forward to the day we spend more time doing the work and less time looking for it.

Q. What is your leadership philosophy, and how do you ensure that it is reflected throughout your organization?

My leadership philosophy is to guide, not dictate, to do so with tons of encouragement, and to set a high bar with my work ethic. I believe in outworking everybody else. I just can’t help it, and probably learned that from Nile Rodgers – a workaholic who literally never sleeps. That commonality is why I think he respected and trusted me, and I find that instills the same trust with my partners and vendors. I build all sorts of teams depending upon each project’s needs, but everyone always knows they can count on me to pitch in with their work, guide them every step of the way, and help them achieve new heights. That is my main responsibility, especially when we get into the creative phases. I work with people who are smarter and more talented than I am, but I help them achieve success through guidance, support and a shared passion for doing beautiful work. People appreciate being appreciated, and they love doing great work in a supportive environment. That is what I really love to provide.

Q. How do you balance the need to innovate and take risks with the need to maintain stability and profitability?

This question is easy – we have to innovate and take risks here, we don’t have a choice! Our goal is to be known as the best in our business doing the most sophisticated work, so we literally have to win gold for every project in order to get there. We won’t survive if we are second best, and we are not positioned to offer ‘safe’ solutions. Go to the big agencies for that. Our process allows us to do bold, innovative work because it is backed up by analysis and strategy, but this level of dedication requires time and budget. We’re positioned as a premium service provider, and our stability and profitability require us to remain premium. Innovation and risk are our lifeblood, and whatever it takes to maintain our platinum level work is always what guides our decisions.

Q. How do you identify and develop the talent within your organization and what role do you see mentorship playing in this process?

Our organization is small by design. I used to staff a team of producers and composers, but now I prefer to figure out exactly what we need first, get the blessing of our client and agency partners, and put together the best people in the world specific to each project. This goes for all roles, from research to production. I love teamwork, especially in the creative phases, and have always achieved great results putting talented people together. Whether it’s collaborating with marketing scientists, pairing up producers and sound designers to achieve something novel, or putting an orchestra together for RZA for his reimagined performance of Wu Tang’s 36 Chambers, my role is team building with heavy active participation. Like Nile once told me, his secret to producing so many bands (Bowie, Madonna, INXS, Duran Duran, Daft Punk, etc.) was becoming a member of their band and working as a peer from the inside. It’s collaboration as a mentor as well as a participant, and I love the way this works and love doing it.

Tell us about the company.

I believe sonic branding is one of the most valuable and underdeveloped frontiers in marketing, and Sonic Lens is undeniably a trailblazer in this field. There is so little that has been done beyond cookie-cutter solutions and so much opportunity to use sound in new ways. With every project we are redefining sonic branding into a more holistic and strategy driven discipline, and as a result, everything we do wins gold. This is a result of our proprietary and collaborative ‘music intelligence’ process – something I developed in part with Nile Rodgers to analyze sonic landscapes and create sonic strategy that goes far beyond the creation of a few signature assets. Transform Magazine named me “Brand Strategist of the Year” in 2022 and “Creative Director of the Year” in 2023, both “firsts” for audio and testament to how different we are and how new our approach is. We apply this to just a few projects per year so we can devote the necessary resources to doing the best work. Since we’re servicing the “master brand”, the most valuable asset class of any business, we follow a rigorously tested process that allows us to get it perfect. That is what sets us apart.

Q. What are the products and services that your company specializes in?

We create “sonic identity systems”, or “SIS”. This is the audio equivalent of a “VIS” or “visual identity system”, which every brand sets up to cover all visual identity rules and assets for all situations. While many people think sonic branding is just a mnemonic (i.e. Intel), we create vast sophisticated systems that are flexible across styles, modular to fit any situation, and precise in how they evoke specific brand attributes. We give brands an actual sound and audio language that fits their essence and purpose. We lay the foundation for an entire vertical in their equity stack that can be built upon over time with no limitations – just an easy to understand set of guidelines and asset toolkits from which to draw.

There are many services we provide to enable this work, starting with consulting – acting as a “sonic lens” so marketers can understand the sonic landscape and apply strategic planning to their own sound. With our network of partners, we provide everything else that might be needed including research, marketing sciences, analytics, focus groups, workshopping, music composition, production, recording, supervision, talent management and negotiation, and more. We are a full service branding agency that happens to focus primarily on music and sound.

Q. How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services?

As I mentioned, Sonic Lens is boutique by design. We are quality over quantity, less we lose our premium position in the market. We recently had the experience of full collaboration with Ford’s visual branding agency, Makerhouse, working hand in hand from day one with their design staff and strategy department. As music is almost always the last add-on piece of the branding puzzle, this was a luxury that never happens in the real world – but the results were off the charts. Together both agencies won every award we entered. We coined the process “synchronized branding” and I have been pushing for similar levels of collaboration ever since. When different branding disciplines inform and inspire each other, the entirety of everyone’s branding work is simply better and more cohesive. In my mind, this is the new “best practices” in branding, and we want to be leading the charge.

Q. What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success?

Our success is based upon our no-shortcuts mentality. I don’t think other agencies have the discipline or know-how to do the tedious research and analysis that goes into our process. I believe in forcing as much thinking and insight into our process as humanly possible, and this takes time...and patience! It’s not easy for music people to hold back their creative work in lieu of analysis and strategy – and that’s why nobody else does it. I believe having lots of data to power strategic conversations allows us to do more daring work with greater buy-in, which is important for brands trying to differentiate. It’s so tempting to rush ahead into the creative phases of sonic branding, but I promise you our work would not be as effective or award-winning if we didn’t put so much effort into aligning with all stakeholders on a bulletproof sonic strategy first.

Q. Could you describe a recent successful product launch or business expansion, and what factors contributed to its success?

Incorporating focus groups – We have recently been inserting more explicit and implicit testing into our music intelligence process, and I am in love with what this unlocks. On our latest bank rebrand, we added a layer of qualitative focus testing with different consumer segments into the demo assessment stage. The specific insights we received allowed us to incorporate the most resonating qualities of our demo work into our revisions, as well as help define how we could stretch our music to better fit different consumer groups by understanding their specific reactions and preferences. As a result of this extra layer of insight and how it refined the work, the follow-up round of implicit testing by Sentient Decision Science came back with their commentary “this is one of the strongest performing sounds that we’ve ever had the good fortune to test.” In addition to proving how precise music can be and how well “music intelligence” works, it gave client stakeholders a lot of confidence and genuine excitement as we approached rollout. I believe gathering these types of focus insights will continue to play a bigger role at more points along our process going forward.

Synchronized branding – This is a process we pioneered last year to enable the total collaboration with outside branding agencies. In creating DraftKings Network, a new multi-channel sports and lifestyle brand, we coordinated a collaborative process with their design agency, Makerhouse. To me, this was a breakthrough that never happens in real life, but must become best practices in branding. Brands are multi-dimensional, and we are pushing to do more ‘synchronized branding’ and partnering with other agencies working on different aspects of the same brand. Everyone’s work should be informed and inspired by everyone else’s thinking to create truly holistic branding systems. That project won a ton of golds, not just for sonic branding but overall branding awards that we entered together as two partner agencies.