SBS's move beyond traditional broadcast into streaming, podcasts and digital created a specific creative problem. The brand needed a sound that could hold together across an expanding media ecosystem without losing what makes SBS, SBS.

As SBS expanded beyond traditional broadcast into streaming, podcasts and digital, it faced a distinct creative challenge: how do you create one recognisable sound for a brand defined by many different voices?

For a broadcaster built on cultural plurality, the risk runs both ways when it comes to a sonic identity. If appeal was too broad, the sound becomes generic. If too distinctive, it would risk excluding the very audiences SBS exists to welcome. A brand for everyone can all too easily end up sounding like anyone.

SBS’s uniqueness is its most distinctive asset and greatest branding challenge. SBS needed to hold seemingly opposing qualities together: warmth and intrigue, familiarity and unexpectedness, heritage and forward momentum. Not as competing ideas, but held together as one single coherent sonic system. That's harder than it sounds.

The creative process started with language, not sound.

Together, SBS and MassiveMusic distilled the brand into a two-word sonic DNA: “Inviting Difference.” It captured the tension at the heart of SBS. Warmth and welcome on one side, intrigue and unexpectedness on the other. Every creative decision that followed was filtered through this lens.

Research with stakeholders across SBS helped define the sonic palette: electronic, layered instrumentation, unexpected sound effects and contrasting textures that could carry the brand's complexity without overwhelming it. Equally important was understanding what to avoid: cinematic expansiveness, overly complex melodies and simplicity that lost the intrigue.

SBS’s sound needed to be both flexible and distinctive - two qualities that can easily pull in opposite directions. From the outset, we knew the system had to deliver both. At the centre of the identity is a six-note melody designed to create distinction and recognition while leaving enough space for curiosity and emotional pull. Rather than resolving too quickly, it draws the listener in - an expression of Inviting Difference in musical form.

From there, the system was built to move. The melody and wider sonic world can be deconstructed, reinterpreted and remixed across everything from masterbrand communications to the shortest digital touchpoints like a three-second sound on a mobile app, changing shape while remaining unmistakably SBS.

The solution is a complete sonic identity built from the idea of “Inviting Difference.” Rather than creating a single mnemonic, SBS and MassiveMusic developed a flexible system spanning a masterbrand theme, sonic logo and modular toolkit of stems, versions and durations.

The six-note melody marked a deliberate evolution from SBS's traditional three-note identity. The additional space creates the curiosity and emotional pull the brief demanded, giving audiences something to follow rather than something that simply announces itself. Individual musical elements within the brand anthem were designed to be extracted, remixed and adapted independently, so the identity can shift register across broadcast, SBS On Demand, radio, podcasts and digital without ever losing its centre.

What makes the system distinctive is that flexibility is built into it rather than bolted on. SBS can change shape across contexts and platforms while remaining unmistakably itself. The sonic identity doesn't just work for SBS today. It's built to evolve alongside the brand and the ever-expanding platform ecosystem it operates in.

When 18 million Australians tuned into the 2026 FIFA World Cup across SBS, they experienced the new sonic brand across every touchpoint: broadcast, streaming, podcast, radio and advertising. This drove significant reach across the launch period, with the sonic logo featuring in over 183 million promo impressions and 2.5 million podcast downloads.

But, reach alone doesn’t prove a sonic identity is working. The impact is behind blind testing.

While it is still early to measure long-term recognition and recall, the initial results show strong reach, positive audience response and clear internal endorsement. In audience testing conducted, the audio logo scored ​63% ​on ​appeal and 66% on brand fit among the general population. Among regular SBS viewers, 75% for brand appeal and ​74% on brand fit. Those numbers confirm the sound is doing what it was designed to do even before the name appears.

The custodians of the sound itself need to love it, too. Internal satisfaction testing revealed that 89% of staff were somewhat/very satisfied with the result. Together, these early results suggest the identity is landing with audiences and embraced internally, while the vision SBS set out now has a sound and a system built to carry both forward.

Creative Director:
Adrian Sergovich

Music and Sound Creative:
Madelyn Tait

Executive Producers:
Katrina Aquilia & Meg Drummond

Composer:
Haydn Walker