SPA sounds authentic and pure without being sad, boring or old-fashioned: a human feel needs to be added.
SPA is the original Belgian mineral water that springs from the Fagnes and is bottled straight from nature since 1583. Darwin x Sonhouse developed a full sound identity and sound strategy to reinforce their corporate identity. The team delivered a unique and distinctive ID.
The Score is the starting point of creating a sound identity. This soundtrack is the alpha and omega of your sound: it contains all the necessary elements for further derivatives. Our mission with it? To make a brand sing in a relevant, distinctive, catchy and ownable way.
“SPA is life” stands at the heart of the sub-brands and products, brought together by the masterbrand. The drivers of SPA are status, parenting and protection. Status refers to leadership and the fact that the water has been there for many years, it doesn’t mean ‘elite’ or ‘royal’. Protection implies preserving the source and by extension our planet, linked with naturality. Last but not least there is ‘parenting’: SPA could be seen as the father & mother who provide all the necessary values and assets for a person to follow his/her own path and natural flow in life: the open note. ‘Pure’ and ‘cherish’ define the brand universe, alligned with the four pillars. Pierrot serves as an important ingredient in the brand and music: joy!
The sound Logo represents the melodic heart, distilled from the Score. Short, particular, recognisable, completely ‘you’.
SPA sounds authentic and pure without being sad, boring or old-fashioned: a human feel needs to be added. Everything the brand represents was captured in 5 notes, combined with the essence in the piano-only version.
Touchpoints are the various opportunities where customers ‘touch’ the brand. At each and every one of these points, brands should give the customer a consistent experience, reinforcing its identity and fulfilling its promise.
Mozart said “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between”. Deploying the sound identity consistently makes your brand stronger. But it’s equally important to avoid sound pollution and overload. Sound should be used only when it amplifies.
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Sonhouse doesn’t recommend using the Score when it doesn’t fit the creation perfectly. When required, a further adjusted version is justified, definitely when the brand architecture asks for it: based on SPA One Brand (motherbrand), there are three tacticals (sub brands). So why not translate the Score into these particular values and add the audio watermark? But most of all: Sonic Branding respects the creative freedom of a specific campaign, the music is adaptable.
Raf De Smet, CD Darwin: “This campaign is the result of an organic approach that wants to profile the brand universe of SPA even more precisely. We have found more rapprochement with man and nature. This approach is permeated with purity and tenderness, two values that the director Casper Balslev beautifully displayed in a modern visual narrative style. His images are neither too perfect nor too typical for advertising, but 100% natural and recognizable. Much attention was also paid to sonic branding. The sound and the sound signature are the work of Sonhouse. They are built around the values that form the DNA of the brand.”
Sonhouse defined an entire Sonic Brand Book to provide a solid sound strategy regarding usage. Crucial element of freedom in the applications is ‘sound design’, referring to the natural elements.
After defining the new purpose Happiness created this new campaign. Musicwise we cleared an existing song by Marble Sounds and integrated the sound logo at the end, together with a water element.
This case was developed with Darwin BBDO and Happiness
