DZ BANK Sonic Branding

Background

Germany's second largest bank, DZ BANK AG, acts as the central institution for over 800 cooperative banks. At the core of the brand is the cooperative principle with the leading idea: Creating success together.

Goal

It was our task to develop a sound branding strategy that makes the DZ BANK brand clearly recognizable and distinguishable at all points of contact - and its individual brand personality tangible. On the one hand, the cooperative and down-to-earth aspect and, at the same time, the modern, international and competent character of the brand.

The result is something to be proud of: The symbiosis of strategy, measurable effectiveness, and a creative concept that expressively interprets the brand essence makes DZ BANK a future-proof innovator in its industry on a sonic level as well.– Timo Erdmann, Director Consulting / Group Head at PSG

Strategic Foundation

We determined DZ BANK's acoustic profile in collaboration with the brand managers and several agency partners, including Peter Schmidt Group Frankfurt and Serviceplan Hamburg.

This profile, consisting of lifestyle and emotional parameters, reflects their unique brand personality and serves as the basis for developing the overall brand sound.

In combination with the TRO Sonic Profiler AI, all music, sound and voice elements can be algorithmically checked for their emotional content and the brand fit verified. The data basis for this are empirical listener studies with over 25,000 people.

Creative Concept

The brand DNA of tradition and innovation is reflected by current compositions in neo-classical music style. The compositions combine classical with electronic sounds and draw on instruments by protagonists from the genre such as Hauschka and Nils Frahm.

In an acoustic brand manifesto of DZ BANK, the brand song, the creative concept together with the strategy, found a musical blueprint from which all further sound elements were derived.

Results

A selection of music and sound elements created so far:

Other brand sound elements created in the project include individual campaign music, a modular music library for online content, the on-air design for DZ BANK's podcasts and a ringtone.

The benefits for DZ Bank

An extensive sound branding guarantees DZ BANK clear recognizability, great flexibility and a watertight, consistent sonic presence. With the help of a sophisticated acoustic design system, it offers its customers orientation and inspires trust: at all points of contact.

Future Strong Campaign

Based on the sound identity, we produced the music for DZ BANK's "Future Strong" campaign. This campaign includes a main film as well as four additional films, each showcasing an international location of the bank. To emphasize the coherence of the films within the "Future Strong" series, specific chords and melodic sequences were integrated into the individual compositions for each location. Each composition features a unique lead instrument that highlights the character of its respective location.

We know that sound is a very emotional brand instrument that can convey orientation and trust to our customers - if it is used strategically. Having recently not exploited its potential, we found the perfect partner in TRO for a focused refinement. When it comes to implementation, we attach great importance to measurability. Here, TRO provides an excellent data basis with its AI-supported sound branding process.– Timo Hensel, Senior Marketing Officer at DZ BANK