Singapore – Electrolux Group’s premium brand AEG has unveiled a bold new visual identity along with its first-ever sonic branding, marking a modern evolution for the iconic 137-year-old German brand.

AEG partnered with growth and transformation firm Prophet to create its new visual identity, designed to reflect the brand’s commitment to bold design and uncompromising innovation. The updated look, recognised by numerous third-party awards, will be applied across various marketing assets, including key visuals, online content, events, and in-store displays.

“Ensuring a brand remains relevant and distinctive is a big challenge for many brands. This refresh not only highlights the importance of evolving a brand with a rich heritage but also stands as a testament to our creative partnership with Electrolux Group,” says Gregg Finlay, executive creative director and AEG account lead at Prophet.

According to AEG, the initial testing showed strong results, with the refreshed branding scoring well among global consumers and receiving positive feedback from retail partners.

Tom Astin, AEG brand and strategy director, said, “We are proud to present a sharpened and more contemporary AEG brand. Our consultations with consumers, together with strong product innovations, have been translated into a bolder and progressive expression—through visual and sound—with a world where distinctive characters play a central role alongside a colour scheme that sets AEG apart from its competitors. The evolved colour palette pays homage to our beginning as a brand back in 1887 by continuing to use red, but now sees the application of darker hues to create more cut-through and distinction. This is a modern update that strongly conveys our premium position in the market.”

Meanwhile, for its first-ever sonic branding, AEG also collaborated with MassiveMusic, the company behind sonic identities for brands like TikTok and Philips. Together, they crafted a unique sound identity that aligns with AEG’s modern brand evolution.

“As well as a visual update, we have also tapped into the emotional shortcut that sound provides to create the first ever sonic identity for AEG. We wanted to capture the world of AEG in audio and asked ourselves what the personality of the brand would sound like?! Our tests placed the music suite in the 78th percentile for memorability and the 80th percentile for appeal. We’re very excited to see this come together in the first instance to support the launch of our latest kitchen range and think the new Sonic identity does a great job to reinforce our brand promise to Challenge the Expected,” Astin explained.

Laura Jones, GM and director of client services for the UK at MassiveMusic London, added, “This was a unique opportunity to bring contemporary edge and relevance to a trusted, household brand through sound. Taking inspiration from AEG’s heritage, design ethos, and positioning, we blended warm, elegant strings with electronic textures, underpinned by a highly recallable melody. The result is a modern, warm, and sophisticated, yet effortlessly cool, suite of sounds that are perfectly in tune with AEG’s new visual identity.”

AEG’s bold new look and sound identity debuted alongside its latest Kitchen Range, featuring AI-assisted cooking technology. The range includes AI TasteAssist, designed to help consumers elevate their cooking with smart, intuitive features.

Sydney, Australia Song Zu, the longest-running and most-awarded music and sound company in the APAC region is set to become MassiveMusic, after both companies were acquired by Songtradr in 2021. Opening its eight and ninth offices in Sydney and Singapore, respectively, MassiveMusic will take on the Song Zu team to further extend its offer for brands and agencies in the region.

The newly incorporated Song Zu team will also add sound design to MassiveMusic’s full-service offer, thanks to their work with renowned brands and media businesses, such as Netflix, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Google, Amazon and Canva. 

MassiveMusic Sydney and Singapore will be led by Ian Lew, managing director, and Ramesh Sathiah, executive creative director with all of the previous Song Zu partners as part of the leadership team. Both offices are committed to the same goal: helping the world’s most renowned brands become more strategic and effective with the emotional power of music and sound. All previous services offered by Song Zu, including audio post production, will continue to be offered by MassiveMusic Sydney and Singapore.

MassiveMusic’s Founder and CEO, Hans Brouwer, said, “Joining with the award-winning team at Song Zu, who have built an incredible reputation for excellent creative work over the years really boosts the MassiveMusic offer on what we can provide for clients in the region. Together, we have the ability to support any brand who’s willing to invest in their music strategy and make the world sound better. Music knows no geographical boundaries and I’m happy we can now say the same.”

Meanwhile, Ramesh Sathiah, executive creative director, MassiveMusic, commented, “I have always admired MassiveMusic as original thinkers pushing the boundaries of the brand/music connection. Their work creating the sound of Kathmandu, Colgate-Palmolive and Philips, and as global sound partners with TikTok, shows what can be done by partnering so closely with agencies and brands. It’s really a full-service music agency, in a way that hasn’t been done here before and we can’t wait to unleash this braintrust on the next creative challenge.”

Founded in 1990, Song Zu has been helping to define the sound of the region’s biggest companies with decades-long relationships with Woolworths, Telstra, Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Tiger Beer. Winning the Australian Creative Hotshop, LIA International Music Company of the year, as well as Gold Spikes, Gold Clios and Gold Lions, among others, has been a testament to their creative credentials.

Part of Songtradr Group, MassiveMusic was acquired by the largest B2B music licensing platform in the world in June of 2021. The deal, which has had MassiveMusic leading Songtradr’s B2B Music Services division, brought together state-of-the-art music licensing technologies with best-in-class creation of bespoke music and strategy for brands and agencies.

London – Branding is a multi-dimensional endeavor, and there could never be too many facets for companies and products to unearth in the goal to serve fresh and ingenious ways of asserting one’s identity. In light of recent developments among brands, it seems that to extract the ‘gem’ in branding is to simply pay attention to one of our God-given senses – our sonic appetite. 

In a new announcement, Colgate has revealed that it will now be joining the earlier adopters of audio branding such as McDonald’s and Intel, to develop its first-ever global sonic identity. 

So how will Colgate sound like? In a feature published on YouTube by MassiveMusic, the international creative music agency in London tapped by the brand to develop its sound, it is said that the audio will simply carry these important elements – strong beat, bright sounds, and ‘surprising moments’. 

Most importantly, it will feature ‘humming’ – which had been decided as the centerpiece of the branding’s ‘big idea’ on ‘Optimism’.

In partnership with its New York team, MassiveMusic shared that in the mid of conceptualization, they have been trying to uncover what ultimately makes a sound ‘optimistic’. Optimism has been Colgate’s core value, never leaving the sight of its campaigns through the years, and it was crucial that the audio embodies it and sounds like it. 

This is in turn has motivated the team to turn to the power of science. According to MassiveMusic, they spoke and worked with academics, ethnomusicologists, and neuroscientists, and at the end of their research, they have been directed to one simple but authentic signifier of positivity – the human hum. 

In the same feature, viewers are taken to the first listen of the sonic identity – an upbeat and cheery hum – that would go in sync with the smile visual animation in the Colgate logo. 

The sonic identity consists of a blend of both female and male tones, and the sonic logo was meticulously recorded in such a way as to sound “very real, close, and natural.” 

The choice of key was also based on research, selecting the ‘D Major’ which is widely accepted as optimistic in nature. The agency said the choice of notation and the portmanteau bend towards the end of the sonic logo was also deliberately thought of to create an activating feeling without being overbearing. 

Roscoe Williamson, global creative strategy director at MassiveMusic, shared that the biggest challenge of the project was its complex nature – the need to create a system of branded ‘watermarked’ music, stemming from a sonic DNA that would be adopted by more than 200 countries and across a broad range of platforms and mediums. 

“And so we created a sonic architecture that could handle this complexity and an overarching aesthetic to the new Colgate music and sound that has universal appeal. To do this, we worked with a team of academics and experts and were able to define music and sound cues that throughout history have represented optimism. These cues are at the heart of Colgate’s new sonic brand and have enabled a flexible system that represents the optimistic nature of the brand in a highly distinctive and holistic way,” said Williamson. 

Meanwhile, Jared Richardson, global head of design at Colgate, commented, “It really was an incredible experience developing the sound of Colgate with MassiveMusic. The process, collaboration, and outcome were fascinating and really enjoyable. The result is a strategically valuable asset that will play out across our global marketing campaigns. We look forward to continuing developing this side of our brand.”

The new sonic brand will be rolled out across North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa-Eurasia, and Asia.