project |
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Under Armour.Sonic Identity. |
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client
Under Armour Global
project
Sonic Identity
disciplines
task
For DOMO, sound isn’t just a one-off piece of music for an individual spot, it’s the beating heart of a brand’s identity. How it feels in our bodies and what connects us to culture.
We had been making music for Under Armour for years, but with our Sonic Strategy, we had the opportunity to craft the way the brand sounds across campaigns, across individual spots, across even the teams who work on different projects, to create the overarching sound of Under Armour.
With our Sonic Strategy we set out to define the sound of the game, to motivate athletes, and - to keep it tactical - to create a blueprint for customization for other creators and teams outside of DOMO. Think of this less as a library of deliverables and more of a paradigm. We’re the ones who create stuff, sure. But we’re also the ones who help creators create, fostering collaboration and building creative systems.
process
Our process always begins with questions. Groundbreaking, we know. Executive Creative Director André Stringer explains, “Our Sonic Strategy is a continuation of our brand work - how do we allow our sound to be driven by core brand evolution? How do we think about this creative challenge in terms that are bigger than music? More importantly, how can our approach connect us to the legacy of the brand, where we’ve come from, while also acting as a generator, giving rise to new and novel experiences?”
The result is a marching band-inspired fusion of cinema, sport, and culture — a durable sonic expression of the UA brand that transcends season, story, and sport. Less music, more of a worldview, a portal into the mind of the athlete that reflects the deepest ethos of the brand.
Because this is DOMO, we’re always concerned with that deep ethos. But we’re also translators, helping teams access that intangible and create brand-right work. Through our process we crafted a toolkit to help creators, storytellers, and comms, internal and external teams, bring the UA fire to their work.
The UA Fire is primal and our sound sucks you into the head and feeling-space of the UA focused performer. Our soundscape is made up of wild unkempt horns, cymbals, and snares blended with breath, heartbeat, chanting and when appropriate, layered voiceover, all designed to elicit a biological response - plunging you into the deep immersive experience of the UA ethos.
Tactically, that means we’ve taken this wildness and translated it into a clear system for collaborators to work from. They can choose from complete compositions in various lengths that can guide their edits, or they can work directly from the stems, customizing UA sonic fundamentals into completely new pieces of music that maintain that consistent thread to UA’s legacy and ladder up to that expression of the brand, while also strengthening it through iteration . While we know the strategy will help distinct teams craft music that is deeply connected to who UA is and has been, it’s also designed to cultivate the next evolution of the brand and who it will become.