If you've had the chance to visit another country in your holidays, a myriad of sounds have for sure been recorded in your mind.
Voices, airplanes, taxis, tv, a forest, wildlife, music...even silence (if you're lucky enough) may configure among many other sounds, the soundscape of your trip to that paticular country. Attached to all of the sounds, the emotions and feelings they produced on you, which are unique to you since they depend on your personality, mood, culture...and so on.
These are personal experiences. An individual point of view. You might select a sound or a few of them to represent your trip (rather than the country itself).
When thinking of the sound brand of the country, the approach isn´t quite the same as an individual impression. Not even as an average brand. A normal brand would certainly define it's sound brand based on it's identity, values, DNA, attributes, territory, personality...as well as of course taking into account many must-haves such as identification, differentiation, uniqueness, flexibility, touchpoints...etc. But a brand is a brand. A person or an organization can create a brand however they like.
That doesn´t happen with a country. It's brand or best, the perception of that brand is more a combination of common shared values, cultures, identity elements, history, ideas, experiences....but definately a shared perception, a consensus, a more or less "democratic" common idea but somehow a widespread one.
Very possibly, when thinking of the Sound Brand of a country, the starting point would be something like: How does your country sounds like for most of the people? or What idea does the people have of the country and how can you represent it through sounds? Of course the How do you want your country to sound like? approach is fantastic, but not always realistic.
In a recent travel to Southern Africa I recorded birds, hippos, monkeys, nightsounds, waterfalls, people singing in beautiful harmony, voices, engines, steps...and still, depending on the main idea and purpose of your branding (or re-branding) the starting point may be a different one.
Nevertheless, the exercise of attaching sound brands to different countries is awesome...and extremely difficult. So many inputs and clichés! Visually we have the flags but anthems does not seem to work just as fine in the sonic arena. Try to think of the Sound Logo of France, Italy, US, China, Mexico or Botswana...at least to me they don`t always quite match with they national anthems. And to you?
Juan Corrales | @juan_corralesr | juan@flyabit.es