Laurence Minsky on the French Open and Audio Branding for the European Business Review

Communication Associate Professor Laurence Minsky and Sixième Son USA director Colleen Fahey have written a new article for the European Business Review on what the French Open can teach businesses about branding.

In the article, the authors write that marketers can look to the French Open’s audio brand in order to improve the “effectiveness of their overall branding efforts—even when they don’t have an audio brand.”

In exploring the French Open’s audio brand, Minsky and Fahey note that differentiation was key to the tennis tournament’s branding success: Upon realizing that the world’s major tennis tournaments are mainly held in English-speaking countries, the French Tennis Federation turned to their Latin-based language for their audio brand’s inspiration. “This insight inspired them to embrace every country that has a Latin-based language – infusing a wide range of Latin sounds and styles in the creation of their sound design.”

As the authors write in their book Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand, “the first step is to recognize that people are more than just visually oriented” and that sound can “reinforce the coherence—or incoherence” of a brand’s intent and promise.