Many sonic branding briefs start with the same request:

"We want something memorable. Something people will hum."

The unspoken dream? People whistling your audio logo in the shower.

They probably won't. And that's fine.

We've worked on sonic identities that became genuinely hummable — "Dogs go wacko for Schmackos," "Insurance Solved with Budget Direct." These are sung jingles deployed relentlessly over years. The melody carries the brand message. That's the strategy.

But that's a specific format for a specific context. It's not what most brands need.

The assumption: good sonic branding is catchy. If people can't hum it, it's not memorable enough.

Wrong.

Even famous sonic logos took decades of deployment before they became "catchy." 

Think Bunnings. Same music. Twenty years. Deployed consistently everywhere. That's volume and repetition at a scale most brands will never approach.

Catchiness is only one way sonic branding builds value. Often, it's not the primary way.

Woolworths' fresh food melody is hummable—most people still hear the words in their head years after the sung version stopped airing. Qantas boarding music isn't something you hum, but it immediately sets the tone the moment you step on the plane. Different jobs, both effective.

For some brands it's emotional reinforcement — sound that makes the brand feel right. For others it's demonstrating taste through curation. Whistlability isn't the goal. Resonance is.

Catchiness matters most when you're using sung jingles, or when your brand tone genuinely calls for it. Many brands don't fit these criteria.

For those that don't, optimising for whistlability is optimising for the wrong thing. Sometimes if the brief is "make it catchy" you might get melodies that are overly simple, singsongy, trying too hard. 

They feel like jingles from a different era. They work as music but don't fit the brand.

Recognition is built through consistency, repetition, and distinctiveness — the same sound appearing in the same contexts over time, at sufficient volume and frequency, sounding different from competitors.

The real goal isn't always a melody people whistle on the way home on the bus. It's a sound that makes the right emotional connection — one that feels coherent with the brand's visual identity, tone of voice, and the feeling you're trying to create every time someone encounters you.

For most brands, the goal is simpler: create a sound that's distinctive and unmistakably yours. That builds brand equity.

And that's what actually matters.