Every sonic branding brief I've seen includes some version of this: "We want something beautiful. Something that sounds premium. Something people will love."

Here's what almost none of them say: "We want something that sounds like nothing else in our category."

That's the problem.

Brands optimise for aesthetic quality when they should be optimising for distinctiveness. And those are fundamentally different objectives.

Beautiful is subjective. Beautiful is safe. Beautiful sounds like what everyone else sounds like because we all have similar reference points for what "premium" or "elegant" means.

I've sat in creative reviews where a sonic logo gets rejected because "it's a bit odd" or "it doesn't sound quite right." What they mean is: it doesn't sound like the category norms. It doesn't sound like what we expected.

And that's exactly what makes it valuable.

Byron Sharp's research on distinctiveness is unambiguous: distinctive brand assets build mental availability. They make brands easier to notice and easier to remember. They trigger the brand in buying situations.

But distinctiveness requires you to sound different. Actually different. Different enough that when people hear it, they know it's you without seeing a logo or hearing your name.

Beautiful doesn't do that. Beautiful just sounds nice. And nice doesn't build salience.

Every category has sonic conventions. Banks sound authoritative - orchestral, strings, serious. Tech sounds modern - electronic, minimal, bright. Luxury sounds refined - acoustic, spacious, subtle.

These conventions signal category membership. They also mean every brand starts to sound the same.

Listen to financial services logos. Most could swap and you wouldn't notice. Same with airlines. Same with automotive. The sounds are beautiful. Well-crafted. Utterly interchangeable.

IPSOS research analysing thousands of pieces of creative found that distinctive brand assets appeared 52% more frequently in high-performing work. Not beautiful assets. Distinctive ones.

JK from Budget Direct knows all about this and his brief to Ramesh and I was as single-minded as the “Insurance Solved With Budget Direct” end result. 

Same goes for the new sonic branding for ANZ we worked on with Paul Seedle. The syncopated percussion and non-lyric vocal are imbued with personality. Is it beautiful? That's not the question. Is it distinctive? Completely.

Or Netflix's "ta-dum." Two notes. Not beautiful in any conventional sense. But unmistakably theirs.

None of these optimise for beauty. They optimise for recognition. And recognition builds mental availability.

Here's the uncomfortable tension: making something distinctive often means making it divisive. If everyone loves it immediately, it's probably not distinctive enough. Because "everyone loves it" usually means it sounds familiar. Safe.

Distinctive sound has edges. It has character. And those choices mean some people will find it unexpected.

That's fine. You're not trying to make everyone love your sonic identity. You're trying to make everyone recognize it.

Here's the test: Play it without brand context. No visuals. No explanation. Just sound. Then ask: could this belong to any of your competitors?

If yes, it's not distinctive enough. You might have something beautiful. You don't have something that builds brand salience.

I've watched brands abandon distinctive work because research showed it was "polarising." Of course it was polarising - it was different. That's the point.

The research they should be doing is: is it distinctive? Is it recognisable as ours? Not: do people immediately love it? Because immediate love means familiar. And familiar means someone else probably sounds like that already.

Let me be clear: beauty isn't irrelevant. Sonic branding should be well-crafted and appropriate for your brand. But if you have to choose between beautiful and distinctive, choose distinctive every time.

A distinctive sonic identity that's somewhat divisive will build more brand equity than a beautiful sonic identity that sounds like your category. Because distinctiveness builds mental availability.

Beauty just makes people feel nice. And nice doesn't build market share.