Why do Brands Need to Sound Flexible during Easter?

Easter, like Christmas, is a Catholic holiday that has taken on more commercial importance. This Catholic holiday has served as a sales and marketing opportunity for the global chocolate industry for many years. For children, chocolate is always worth celebrating; however, a growing segment of the adult population buys sweets for personal enjoyment.

Our Sonic Check tool shows how Reese’s presents weaker expressions of Energetic and Happy moods. These moods do not capture the moods of chocolate or Easter.

For brands that want to create marketing campaigns for holidays, an understanding of the emotional expectations of their audience is key. Preserving brand identity requires flexibility, especially for unique, targeted occasions. Fortunately for many chocolate brands, the expectations of Easter aren’t substantially different from the moods and styles of their typical messaging. Despite this, some brands perform better than others when modifying their typical branding.

For example, from a marketing perspective, Ferrero Rocher, our favorite chocolate brand, can effectively meet holiday expectations while enhancing brand values.

One of the main takeaways from our Easter video is the importance of brand flexibility. In our analysis, Reese’s solely used stock music in their main product campaigns and Easter holiday campaigns, which almost completely failed to inspire an appetite for their product. On the other hand, Ferrero Rocher highlights the sensualness of their deluxe truffles with custom orchestral music, creating a rich backdrop for a luxurious female voice. This dichotomy is reflected in the investment in their visual branding as well.

Sonic branding is much more emotional and authentic (when done well), meaning the sound of the brand will drive the desire for a piece of chocolate. Ferrero Rocher only had to subtly change the composition of their vivid orchestral custom music and slightly shift the inflection of the smooth and seductive feminine voice for their Easter ad. Since they do this regularly, it seamlessly fits within their greater marketing strategy.

There is one fault, however, in Ferrero Rocher’s sonic branding strategy. While their brand identity works for them year-round, the combination of orchestral tones and a female voice makes them susceptible to copycat brands, thus hindering their uniqueness. This in no way means that Ferrero Rocher’s brand identity should be abandoned, but instead, it highlights a need for strengthened ownability and distinctness in the saturated chocolate advertising world. If they had certain sounds, such as an owned melody or other components of amp’s patented Sonic DNA, they could remain unique and identifiable, both when other brands sound like them or when they occasionally will need to sound a little bit different, say for the spookier side of October. How luxurious does it feel to receive a tower of truffles or even a single Ferrero Rocher candy for Halloween?

Our Sonic Check tool shows Ferrero Rocher leans towards chilled, happy, and sexy. These moods show a better adaptation for the expectations of Easter time.

A Sonic DNA is a great tool to empower and refresh your sonic branding. But, if a brand is still trying to figure out its audience, how are they meant to meet customers’ emotional and sonic expectations? Amp has engineered a set of proprietary sonic tools to assist brands in their sonic journey.

Sonic Check, which helped us highlight the different tactics taken by chocolate brands during this holiday, can also be used for any regular or special marketing campaign. Sonic Check helps ad producers or music creators at any step of the ad creation process. By analyzing your piece of sonic content (music track or even full ad video), Sonic Check provides proportional mood matching and in-depth track breakdowns based on emotion over time.

In this image, Sonic Check helps you analyze individual music tracks for your brand's sonic principles over time.

Sonic Check, which helped us highlight the different tactics taken by chocolate brands during this holiday, can also be used for any regular or special marketing campaign. Sonic Check helps ad producers or music creators at any step of the ad creation process. By analyzing your piece of sonic content (music track or even full ad video), Sonic Check provides proportional mood matching and in-depth track breakdowns based on emotion over time.

If you would like to connect with your audience in a unique and authentic way, reach out to us here at amp to explore sonic solutions that effectively translate across touchpoints and global markets. If you’re curious to see more key examples of stronger and weaker efforts, we recommend you check out our video on Chocolate ads for Easter.