www.europeanbusinessreview.com 53 Marketing Improving one’s brand identity is indeed one of the greatest challenges marketers have. It is for this reason that they’re constantly on the lookout for approaches on how they can capture the attention of customers without them being overfamiliar or overwhelmed. Looking at how the French Open created their audio brand and how they have managed it since its launch can help marketers improve the effectiveness of their overall branding efforts – even when they don’t have an audio brand. P rofessional sporting events, like busi- nesses, have a wide variety of audiences, stakeholders, touchpoints and channels, and are fghting to stand out and win the hearts and minds of their audiences. This holds true even when they have a unique and beloved product. Like business marketers, sports venues and events struggle in unifying all of their communications, so they convey the same personality across all of their touchpoints and platforms but with enough fex in their voices to meet the audience’s specifc needs in a particular moment. And like businesses, they experience the common dilemma of keeping the brand fresh year after year while building the recognisability they can only achieve by the long-term consistent use of branding elements. While internationally recognised as the world’s top clay court tennis championship with more than three billion viewers across the globe, 1 the French Open tournament experienced all of these issues. And four years ago, they found a unique, powerful, and highly successful solution – one that can be instructive to all marketers, from consumer to business-to-business. What was the solution? They developed an audio brand – a complete language of sound and music composed to deliver their vision, values and promise, just as marketers do with visual branding elements. And then they built that audio brand into key moments of the tour- nament experience and all its communications. It sounds like common sense to create an audio brand, but sonic or sound branding is still rarely employed by marketers. As we pointed out in our book, Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand, the frst step is to recognise that people are more than just visually oriented – that your sound can reinforce the coherence – or incoherence – of your brand promise. 2 And, while you might even recognise a few audio logos – Intel, SNCF, McDonald’s, MICHELIN, AXA, for instance, the audio logo is just the frst WHAT THE FRENCH OPEN CAN TEACH BUSINESSES ABOUT BRANDING: The Ten Key Lessons Every Marketer Should Know BY LAURENCE MINSKY AND COLLEEN FAHEY The French Open was the only one located in a country with a Latin-based language. 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 crevation of their sound design.