Ultimately, brands strive for memorability: how well a listener can retain and recall it.

Many factors go into designing an effective sonic logo ↗, such as how well its characteristics fit the brand’s personality, or how appealing it feels to the consumer. However, memorability is what tends to stand out the most.

Melodic memory can be interpreted and applied in different ways: melodic recognition (hearing a melody and knowing you’ve heard it before) and sung recall (successfully singing the melody after hearing it). Imagine speaking with a friend, and they mention a jingle they heard recently:

“Did you hear that new coffee shop jingle on TV last night?”

“I’m not sure!”

“It went like this: Ta-ta-ra-TA-DA!”

“Oh yeah, that one!”

This conversation includes both sung melodic recall (“Ta-ta-ra-TA-DA!”) and melodic recognition (“Oh yeah, that one!”), an exchange that takes place every day.

So, should your brand’s sonic logo prioritise recognition or recall? And, how do we achieve this?

When we think about the qualities of a sonic logo that make it highly recognisable vs recallable, some feel fairly intuitive. First, a sonic logo with high recognition might have an element of distinctiveness that makes it stand out and feel unique, making it easier to notice amongst other sounds. Alternatively, a sonic logo with high sung recall might have some kind of stickiness and be clear in your mind, making it easier to reproduce.

But what musical properties actually influence both recognition and recall, and how do they relate to each other?

The recall and recognition of sonic logos ↗ (Silas et al., 2026) tackled this exact question, and it turns out it’s quite challenging to achieve both high melodic recognition and sung recall in sonic logos.

In collaboration with SoundOut, this study tested 90 unpublished sonic logos and found that both recognisability and recallability actually vary a lot across commercial sonic logos. These are distinct processes that tap into different melodic components, meaning a sonic logo's characteristics can influence each one separately.

A particularly interesting finding from this research was that complexity helps recognition of sonic logos but hinders recall.

We found that making a sonic logo more structurally complex - including breadth of melodic material, as well as intervallic and rhythmic information - can make it easier to recognise. This complexity makes it more distinct, allowing it to stand out.

If we relate this finding to sonic logos out in the world today, one that particularly stands out amongst a sea of other sounds is TikTok ↗ - a sound that often doesn’t come to mind until we hear it in the app. It consists of a bass hit followed by a 4-note ascending melody: fast-paced with a wide intervallic leap. You wouldn’t necessarily sing this sonic logo, but as soon as you hear it, you instantly know it’s TikTok. This strength in recognition is also vital on social media’s rapid short-form content, which is so crowded with sound and music, making it even more important to stand out.

Another interesting example is Hyundai’s ↗ sonic logo: a 6-note ascending melody, made up of 2 groupings, over a wide melodic range. Again, it’s a challenging melody to sing, especially at such a fast pace, but its structural complexity makes it very prominent at the end of advertisements.

I’ve often heard that many successful sonic logos are the ones that you can’t necessarily remember on the spot, but when you hear them in an ad, they catch your attention straight away and you know exactly who the brand is.