PARTNER CONTRIBUTION

By Tammy Greenberg    October 15, 2026     7-minute read

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Marketers are operating in an environment filled with more content, more channels, and more competition for attention. As artificial intelligence (AI) makes content faster and easier to produce, standing out is only part of the challenge. Brands must also be recognized and trusted.

Sound, amplified by the trust and companionship radio provides, can help brands achieve both goals. Familiar notes, distinctive voices, jingles, or recurring phrases can identify a brand before its name is spoken. Combined with the cultural relevance and community connection of radio and audio platforms, these cues do more than boost recall. Used consistently, they build familiarity and signal that the message comes from a source consumers know and trust.

The question for marketers becomes: Has the brand built an identity consumers could recognize with their eyes closed?

Most brands have defined visual guides but lack an overall audio brand style guide. Voice, sound, and music tend to change from campaign to campaign. The work may earn attention, but that is not enough. An ad can be memorable but attributable to the competition. For brand building, consumers must be able to connect the experience, feeling, or message to the company behind it.

Sonic assets can strengthen that connection. A Forbes analysis cited an Ipsos study of more than 2,000 video ads in which visual brand assets appeared in roughly 92 percent of the work, while audio assets appeared in fewer than 10 percent. Despite such a wide gap, ads that used audio brand assets were significantly more likely to rank among the strongest performers for branded attention. The findings point to a considerable opportunity: Brands have spent decades refining how they look, but many have invested far less in how they sound.

Whether a sonic logo, jingle, voice, music, or storytelling style, the asset must be distinctive to the brand and used consistently across audio platforms for the association to take hold. Radio's broad reach, frequency, and place within daily routines give brands repeated opportunities to establish distinctive audio cues in a familiar, trusted listening environment.

Recognition is closely tied to trust. As technology makes production, versioning, and personalization easier, the influx of AI-created content makes brand identity and credibility even more important.

Audio has a meaningful advantage in this area because listeners form relationships with voices over time. Radio and podcast personalities are part of daily routines, from the commute and school run to the workday and trip home. Across its broadcast, streaming, and podcast platforms, radio entertains, informs, and remains connected to the communities and interests its audiences care about. Familiarity is built through repeated human interaction and cannot be created artificially.

Research from Omnicom Media Intelligence and iHeartMedia places measurable outcomes behind that relationship. In a controlled study of more than 3,500 weekly audio listeners, host-read advertising outperformed pre-recorded ads on measures including personal connection, brand trust, relevance, search intent, and purchase intent. Trusted hosts generated the strongest gains. In addition, longer host-read executions produced up to twice the unaided recall of 30-second host reads and helped move high-intent consumers toward purchase more quickly.

The implication is practical. The media and the voice that delivers the message should be treated as a strategic decision, particularly in complex, high-consideration or trust-sensitive categories. Brands benefit from voices that already have an authentic relationship with the audience, provided those personalities are given room to communicate naturally and in a way that reflects why listeners trust them, as partnering with trusted creators can broaden reach outside of the brand's usual audience.

Audio also creates an emotional connection that can be difficult to replicate in other media. Music sets a mood. A voice communicates warmth, authority, urgency, and/or reassurance. Sound effects establish a scene, while pacing and silence can create anticipation. Because listeners complete the picture in their minds, the experience is personal and immersive.

A 2026 global study, "Audio: The Secret to Profit & Trust," based on a System1 analysis of 1,260 Effie Award-winning campaigns, found that campaigns that included audio were 75 percent more likely to generate profit, 81 percent more likely to build trust, 81 percent more likely to increase price insensitivity, and 19 percent more likely to acquire customers than campaigns without audio.

Additionally, audio roughly doubled profit for emotionally driven advertising. When audio was combined with distinctive brand assets such as jingles or a sonic device, the profit index rose by 103 percent, compared to campaigns without audio or distinctive assets. The results demonstrate that emotion and attribution work in concert: Sound helps an ad create feeling, while distinctive assets help ensure that feeling is connected to the right brand. While presenting the findings at the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, world-renowned marketing professor, brand consultant, and award-winning columnist Mark Ritson summed up his advice to brands bluntly: "Get a f'ing jingle."

Radio has long used these elements to create what is often called "theater of the mind," inviting listeners to complete the story through imagination. That active participation is incredibly powerful.

Distinctive assets become more valuable when consumers see or hear them often enough to recognize them. Additional findings from the profit and trust study show that emotional campaigns delivered greater profit the longer they ran. Campaigns that combined emotion with recognizable brand cues were also the most likely to increase market share.

Radio is particularly well suited to that long-term brand-building process. Its scale and frequency allow sonic assets to become familiar over time, while its personalities and local relevance reinforce the trust surrounding the message.

A recognizable audio identity works best when advertising is designed for listening. Repurposing visual copy misses what makes audio powerful: imagination, intimacy, storytelling, pacing, music, effects, and silence.

Guidance from RAB, iHeartMedia, Cumulus Media | Westwood One, Audacy, and other creative-effectiveness resources points to several consistent practices:

• Start with one clear idea.
• Establish the brand early and reinforce it naturally.
• Choose a voice that fits the brand and the audience.
• Use the power of sound to create feelings and meaning.
• Give trusted radio talent room to be themselves.
• Use the same distinctive assets across touchpoints and over time.

A useful starting point is to play the audio from a brand's ad and remove the final brand mention. Could consumers still identify the brand? Does it sound distinctive to the brand or like others in the category? Is the voice credible? Is there a feeling, phrase, or sound the brand can own. Is it being used often enough, across radio's broadcast, streaming, and podcast platforms for long enough to become familiar?

If the brand is difficult to identify, the opportunity is significant. Distinctive sounds can build memory, emotional creative can earn attention, and trusted voices can lend credibility. With consistent use, those elements create a recognizable system that works across radio and the broader audio ecosystem, as well as every channel where sound is present.

As content becomes easier to generate, what is genuinely recognizable and trustworthy becomes more valuable. Technology helps marketers develop and activate more efficiently; radio allows brands to remain human, familiar, and credible. In a marketplace where trust is increasingly difficult to earn, a brand that can be instantly recognized with eyes closed may be in the strongest position to be remembered and thus purchased.

RAB is a partner in the ANA Thought Leadership Partner Program.

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