The Audio Side of Video

Hello everyone and welcome back to VideoDays, the annual event for everyone doing video. Hello and welcome, welcome back if you joined us yesterday for day one and welcome to all of you new ones if this is your first day of VideoDays. I'm very excited to be your host. If you don't know me, my name is Amelia and I'll be taking you through the program for today and really help us all elevate our video games to the next level. I can't believe that this is already our sixth year bringing everyone doing video together to really share and learn and make sure that we can build some amazing video strategies for the year to come. We have a great lineup of six sessions from different industry leaders speaking. We have TwentyThree, we've had Saxo, we've had agencies like AKQA and BurnWe. Today we'll be hearing from Sonic Minds. We have a lot of great people in this session as well as StoryKid and VO Technologies. And I'm just so excited to share all these incredible insights, tips and tricks with all of you guys so we can really build our video game for 2026. If you missed out on anything that went down yesterday, we can have a quick look at the program together. So yesterday we had sessions from the TwentyThree keynote. We also had a video game. We had Saxo's video strategy journey followed by video for complex storytelling. Now if you are feeling like you missed out on some of the content from yesterday, do not worry about it. You can catch all the sessions on demand. For today's program, we have an equally exciting lineup kicking off with the audio side of video here at 2 p.m. Then we'll go on to scaling your video efforts. We'll be hearing from two different speakers. And then we wrap up with the state of video report. Now it is our belief as a company that video is one of those fundamental things that makes the digital world more human and more real. And every year we host video days. We host webinar days and our annual TwentyThree Summit to really drive the field of video forward. Together with all of you. So I just want to give a special thank you to all of our amazing speakers who across yesterday and today will help hundreds and thousands of video marketers, video producers, webinar program managers, and business leaders all over the world to really improve their video efforts for 2026. And of course to the audience, thank you so much for taking time out of a busy December to be here. So I invite you all to lean back, get comfortable, maybe even pick up a beverage and enjoy something while you're tuning in. And of course don't forget to take your notepad out so you can also make some notes along the way. Before we really dive into today's first session, I want to give you a quick run through of the platform so that you can also engage as much as possible. And this is a big invitation to all of you. 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Now, might notice that I have a little special something here on my desk for you. If you were with us yesterday, you might have seen this box already. But we have a very special holiday gift for you, which is a big thank you for contributing to our event. Which is... Our very own discount code. To the 23 Summit 2026. Happening on May 28th and May 29th. So please use this discount code to go to the 23.com slash summit website. There should be a link somewhere in the chat right about now, so you guys can already use this discount code to sign up. This code gives you a ticket for only 99 euros. Which is 400 euros off the original price of 499. So make sure that you sign up now and you get your free ticket because this code will expire on December 24th. So just to give you guys a little bit of time to secure your tickets. I'm going to play you a quick reel from the Summit 2025 this year. Just so you can get a little sense of some of the magical moments and what it was like to be there in person. Here we go. Assymen Giants Chariots TAg Org Mitra Well, that already made me excited. I can't wait to see you guys all in May. In Copenhagen for 23 Summit 2026. But before we start talking about the next event, let's dive into the session. So next up, we have a very exciting session that is all about the audio side of video. Now, audio is a crucial part of video. And in today's first session, we're going to be hearing from Sonic Minds on building a strong audio identity. And why branded sound matters. And some practical tips for really enhancing your videos through sound. And we'll be hearing from none other than John Cleworth. He is a creative lead at Sonic Minds. He helps brands really craft distinctive audio identities that help elevate both the actual video content. But always making sure that they are on brand and have that recognizable brand sound. So I'm going to bring John up into panel. And see if he is all ready to go. Hello, John. Welcome to Video Days 2025. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks, Amelia. And thanks for the lovely introduction. Nice to see you. Very nice to see you again digitally. Where in the world are you tuning in from? Can I ask? I'm probably a matter of kilometers away from you. I imagine. I'm not sure. But I'm in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lovely. And are you working? Are you working out of your office, your studio? Are you tuning in from a home setup? This is just our office setup. Yeah, nothing too fancy. This is just one of the rooms. But yeah, just from my office where I am every day. Yeah. That's so nice. I was actually invited by my production team to host outside of the office for this year's event. So we are not in the office. But exploring different spots. We are exploring different spots around the city. So give me a little feedback in the chat from the audience, please. Let me know what you guys think about this setup and the space that we're in. We have some reactions. So if you give me a thumbs up or a smiley, let me know what you think. And who knows? Maybe we'll keep exploring some exciting venues. But, John, I'm super excited to hear what you have in store for us. I think we have all had that experience of how crucial it is to be able to do something like this. Like how useful audio can be when it comes to video. And especially, if you've ever experienced bad audio in video content, how disruptive it can be. So I think I'm going to be one of those taking notes vicariously throughout. So whenever you're ready, the digital stage is all yours. And just take it away. Fantastic. Thanks again, Amelia, and thanks for the nice introduction. Nice to see you digitally, everybody. And welcome to the audio side. of video and I trust that you can see my screen. I'll be sharing a presentation as we go forward. It's going to be fun, I must say. This is all about sound, the sound side of video, which is just inherently fun. You know, sound is an emotional thing. It's the most emotional tool in your kind of video toolbox, I will say. That's what sound is. It dials in emotion. It's the emotional backbone. It's the driver of the video, the emotional driver. So yeah, it's going to be fun. I'll be making some sounds with my mouth, which will be fun. You'll be hearing some other sound examples, some abstract, some more practical use cases towards the end. But yeah, let's dive in. It's going to be good fun. So quick, the agenda. We're going to do it in two parts. First part, why sound? Why is it important? Why should you care about it? I think you should care a lot about it. I'm not being biased at all, but we'll talk about why I think you should. We'll talk about sound pairing with visuals, how they kind of interact with each other, because they are very much one thing in regards to video. We'll talk about types of sound that you can use in video, different categories of sound, how to employ them. Then we'll talk about branded sound, which is really at Sonic Minds, where I work. This is really what we do. It's Sonic branding. So it's kind of, I'll dive into that in a second. Then we'll have a short Q&A before we go to part two, which is how sound? How do you sound in your videos? So we'll do some sound examples, practical use cases. And then we'll discuss creating a red thread across your different touch points, which is very important for brands. Cool. So why sound? Why is it important? Why is it such an important aspect of video? Well, I can start by saying it's extremely important because in videos, you have what? Two senses, sight, the visual aspect. I won't be covering that because I think that will be well covered in this video days, these two days. So I'm talking about the other sense in video, two senses, sight and sound. That's what I'll be talking about. Sound is, you know, there's two senses. So sound is 50% of communication in a video, 50%. If not more, if you're speaking emotion and feeling, it's more than 50%. Sound really carries a lot of that weight in regards to emotion. But if you think about it, 50% of communication in your video is done through sound. So it kind of puts in perspective, wow, it's actually really important. And I know a lot of you here know that it's important. So that's why we're going to dive into is why it's important. We'll go through examples where hopefully you can feel, oh yeah, it really does change how you perceive a video using different types of sound. So I always like to say your sound, your music that you use in the video, it's the first impression. It's very important. And for a brand, your product or your brand isn't any better than how you look, which I'm sure you know, your visuals, but it's no better than how you sound. So if you sound crap, to be banal, you're perceived as being somewhat similar. So it's super important to care about this because attention to detail, care or lack of care really communicates to your audience. So let's dive into it. Now, I always like to just remind before we dive into some listening examples, people don't remember messages, right? They don't really remember what they're told, taglines, what they see so much in a video. They more remember what they feel as a viewer, what they feel when they're seeing a video. And it's that second line, how people feel. That's really where sound and music come in. It's the feeling, it's the emotional aspect. Sound drives the emotion and therefore that's the memorable part. So it's a very, very crucial thing to kind of dial in. Because it's really that feeling that we remember after the video and not really what is told so much. It's hard to remember those specifics, right? Cool. So sound and visuals. Sound and visuals are connected. They're not two separate entities, but one. And they actually work together. They kind of rub off on each other. They, you know, like a good friendship, they kind of hold each other up at certain points. They make each other seem better or worse, if done poorly. And they kind of hold should be seen as one entity. And that's what I want to dive into now. Because they're linked. Sound is more abstract. It's just vibrating air molecules at the end of the day. So it's highly emotional. It's very abstract. It all happens in our mind. But there are some kind of rules and go-to things, universally understood ways of... pairing sound to visuals. So to prove this, I have a few fun little exercises here. So hopefully, we can see how sound and visual actually have an inherent kind of connection to one another. So let's talk about materials and textures first. Now on the screen in front of you, you will see a somewhat familiar material. Perhaps a tree, wood, bark, and more of theulating material. kind of know the feeling. Now if I said to you, if I just make some random sounds with my mouth and I said to you, is this material in front of you? Is this image, is this visual in front of you? Does it sound like do-do-do or zing-zing-zing more? Now probably most of you think do-do-do suits this visual more than zing-zing-zing. How about this then? Do-do-do or zing-zing-zing? Which sound did I make suits this visual in front of you better? Perhaps for this one more zing-zing-zing. So you can see that sound is actually connected there to a visual. Even just a simple visual like this seeing wood or metal, we kind of have an inherent understanding of how that sounds, which is quite odd, right? At least it is to me. These are materials, we kind of, we are familiar with these materials. We know when we tap wood or a tree, it has a sound. So therefore we know the sound. Or with metal, if we scrape metal, we also, we're familiar with these kinds of sounds. So I get that. So let's step one step further back. Let's abstract one level, two shapes now. So let's do the same with a few, with these shapes on the screen. Now if I say wong instead of zing, I imagine the first wong probably suits this. What about now? Wong-zing. Wong-zing. What about this? Ka-ka-ka-ka, perhaps. Fwa-fwa-fwa-fwa. Now we have zing, zing, zing. Right? So it's a bit silly, but the odd thing here is that these are just merely lines on a screen assembled into these kind of 2D shapes. But we can, hopefully you somewhat agree with me on the sounds I'm making. We, you know, we can kind of agree that they have a sound. They have an inherent sound, which is super odd for such an abstract thing like a shape, because it's not something we touch, so to say, like, like it was with the tree example. Okay. So if we agree on how shapes sound, what if we take it a step even further, abstract further, and do it with colors? Now, why I'm doing this is also to kind of say, if we agree on how abstract things like a simple shape on a screen sounds, if we can agree that it sounds like this and not this, you can start to see how we can actually form branded sounds. So you can actually take very abstract ideas like a shape, or in a brand's situation, take abstract things like brand values, or brand identity, or visual identity, things like that, things that are very abstract and complex. We can actually convert those. Into sonic identity, into sonic assets, into sounds, and music and all that. So this is just a very simplistic way of kind of demonstrating that branded sound is just taking those abstract concepts and slowly converting them into sound, taking your brand and portraying it through sound. Okay, let's do the same thing with colors. This will be a bit different this time. Colors are more abstract even than shapes. They're very subjective. They're very personal. How people perceive colors. People attach it to certain kind of memories, cultural things, all kinds of stuff. But let's have a go. This time, I'm going to play sounds for you. Not music, but just small sounds. And see, I won't talk in this example. I'll just play you some sound. But if you watch the screen, very simple. It's just going to be a color, and you'll hear some sound. And just see, not only two things, not only how the sound that I play pairs and matches the color and matches what you see into one, but also in this case, the sound can change what you see or change how you perceive what you see slightly and actually heighten the experience and perhaps make it more emotional or change the emotion. So let's dive in. Let's have a look. I won't talk, but if you just watch the screen and listen and just see what you feel, I'm curious to hear. bien i Thank you. Thank you. Cool. So I'm curious to hear in a moment when we hit the Q&A, perhaps how you experienced those colors. But whether it was different, I think I can make an educated guess perhaps, or at least just assume that not only did the sounds pair the colors at times, at least for some of them, I hope, and pair well, but more that even a simple thing, just a color on a screen and one random sound, it can really heighten the experience. It goes from just merely a color to something that's kind of emotional. Perhaps it's nostalgic for certain. Or made you think about a certain moment or made you feel something or remind you of somebody or whatever it was. I can't say right. That's the beauty is that's the subjective part of sound. But at least it heightened it. It made it more. It exaggerated it. So sound and music, for that sake, you know, it seriously influences what we see and how we perceive what we see. It changes it a bit. It makes it more extreme. So this is, again, why sonic branding, which we'll get to more in a moment, is so powerful. When sound and visual is paired together to make one, like with the red color you just saw with the sound, their one, it's greater than the sum of its parts, right? It becomes something bigger, a more emotional experience. And it's that emotional experience which we remember over time. That's the thing we remember was, you know, perhaps after this talk, you'll just remember one thing. Maybe you remember the red color and the feeling you had. It's that kind of thing, right? And that's why sonic logos are so powerful when they're combined with visual logos to make one. So in front of you here, you can see just some research done where you can see that when in the blue columns on the screen, you can see that when audio logos or sonic logos, the same thing, when they're paired with a visual logo at the beginning or end of a piece of video content, they perform better on all of these metrics. You can see they're more trustworthy, they're more relatable, they're more likable, they're more attention grabbing, which is a huge one, right? More authentic. But you can also see they're less generic, of course. So people perceive sound and visual when paired well together, they perceive it as just being better in all ways, shapes and forms. So very powerful stuff. Very powerful. And I hope even just me playing you the most simple of things, a color and a random sound can kind of bring that home a little bit. It's just exaggerated, I will say, when you use motion, animation, moving image or this kind of stuff, cinematography, all these things I'm saying are just exaggerated. And of course, when you use music, all these things I'm saying just become more and more tenfold. Cool. So what about types of sound in video? Let's just quickly cover the different types of sound that you can use and utilize, because there are different types of sound and they do different things, they have different purposes. So let's talk sound in video. First up, there's two main categories, I will say. The first being diegetic sound and the other being non-diegetic sound. What these are, diegetic sound just means all the sound that happens on screen. So me right now, hitting this, I'm not sure if you can hear that through noise cancellation, but me tapping the glass on screen, that's a diegetic sound because it's happening on screen. Me talking to you right now is a diegetic sound because it's happening on screen. Even things like ambience. So if it was raining behind me and you heard that, that's a diegetic sound. Foley or foley is kind of me doing this, or it's the people in film, in cinema who record all the footsteps themselves and, you know, punch cabbages to make a sound. To make a fight scene or a punching sound. It's all that kind of fascinating stuff. That's foley. Dialogue, it's me talking to you right now, of course. And now these things are what creates realism in a video. It's the things that happen that you're seeing. So you're associating the sound with what you see. They're there to create an immersive experience and put the kind of the viewer into the film as if they were there. If you had all these things muted, it's not very realistic, right? It's just something that you're watching and you're not really feeling anything. So these are the realistic sounds, the diegetic. Then there's the non diegetic sounds. And these are the ones that happen off screen. So a sound that is not me tapping a glass, but things like, for example, music. That's not on screen unless you have on screen a string quartet playing. Of course, that becomes diegetic sound. But things like adding a soundtrack to a video. It's music. Or it's kind of an off screen sound. Sound effects as well. You know, all this kind of stuff that grabs your attention and keeps you engaged. Swooshes, rises, impacts. That's added in a creative matter as an off screen sound. Also, narration. So voiceover as well is a thing added after the fact to kind of tell you a message, which is very important. And then there's something that goes into that when talking about narration. How to tell the message. Who's telling the message? Is it me telling the message, which will give you a certain kind of feeling rather than if it was my grandfather telling you the same message that would give you a very different or it would make you perceive the message differently. Right. Being told. Now it's these non diegetic sounds, these creative sounds like music, sound effects, narration, all the things you add to a video and post production, it's those sounds that can all be branded. So music. You can just choose stock music, generic music, which can be great for many use cases. I'm not saying it's not good, but you can actually make that branded the music in many ways, shapes and forms. Another thing is sound effects. You can make them your own ownable kind of sound effects assets that are very much memorable over time because they're your sounds tailored to the brand narration can also be branded. So you can have your brand voice, right? The one person who always reads in your visual community. So you start to become familiar with them. You get to know them a bit, which builds trust, all this kind of stuff. But also with narration or voiceover, it's all about who's talking and who your audience is. Are you trying to appeal to the audience that you're using a physical communication to communicate with? Because then choosing that voice is very important. Like I said, who's speaking is super crucial. be branded in terms of everything can be branded because the ones who do it really well in terms of sound in video or audio and video the people who do it the best are the ones who actually use diegetic sound uh or use branded diegetic sound um so what i mean by that is even the sounds that you see on screen me tapping something or me you know pressing something on my phone and then actually hearing the sound of me interacting with the phone is a branded sound itself so that's really next level that's meta because not only is all the post-production sound branded like music sound effects narration tone of voice all that kind of stuff but even the sounds within the video um become grounded so the product sounds if you're using a product launch video product demonstration use the sound of the product even if it's a shoe use the sound of that shoe or if it's a phone use the ux ui sound uh you know you could use more of that kind of stuff just give a bit of a transparent then do it again something else as well sonic logo which i just talked about and we all know the great sonic logos i think netflix does it well and something we all know and love uh it's the short signature memorable sound that we kind of associate with the brand right very very powerful stuff and i don't need to go into it any more than that cool just to finish this uh part one i'd like to just play you a short film where you can actually hear all these things i've talked about you can hear music being tailored to the brand you can hear sound effects but you can also hear what i just talked about where the sounds within the video itself the diegetic sounds i actually branded two to create this kind of super holistic video experience so let's let's play that video now so that was just a little excerpt from a recent apple launch video but i think it's a great way of showing where music is used uh where where kind of ambience is used all these things that i've talked about but also the actual sounds you hear in the video are their own sounds um kind of bringing it back home and creating that like holistic branded experience so yeah great great so that was part one why sound um perhaps we could open it up to a quick question and answer if yes i've had a little uh sneak peek and there's actually no official questions from the audience yet so i'm going to hang out here for a quick uh couple of seconds just if we have any um anyone who's changing their mind and wants to ask a question but i'm curious john i'm going to sneak to the front of the line because when you were showing these different 2d shapes and you were making uh zing and zag there was definitely some type of sound that fit better with a different shape do you under can you explain why that is why do we have some of these kind of preset associations to what sounds go with shapes because i don't think any of us would have thought that we would have necessarily had an opinion about this before the session but there was definitely a you know some head nodding going on uh from the production team when when we heard the different sounds to the different shapes yeah yeah yeah no it's a great question it is fascinating we don't know everything about it i will say and that's the beauty of it it's the beauty of it is a lot of this stuff is so abstract it's still mysterious and that's also why we love sound and music is it's beautiful because it's mysterious it it works in mysterious ways but i will say that there's a lot the reason why i started for example with materials the wood and the metal the dodo do and the zing zing zing with the wood and metal is because we have a lot of reference to real world things when it comes to sound so like i said with wood we kind of know it looks soft therefore it should sound soft as well so like with the triangle zing zing zing it it looks sharp so it should sound you know phonetically sharp as well there's a good if you want to dive deeper there's some good research that was done years and years decades decades ago by scientists where they kind of coined the term kiki buba where they dived into this where they realized if you show a like a bubble on the screen and then a little like spiky object on the screen and you ask people is this kiki or is this buba people always no matter where you're from say that's buba and that's kiki right and it seems kind of obvious and once you kind of do it you think oh yeah that is obvious but it's just fascinating i think it's super crucial to bring up because that's at the core at the real essence what sonic brand you know is ultimately about is kind of converting those odd abstract things like that into sound but we all have a universal understanding of how those things should sound exactly and i think you you have a very interesting point because there's maybe not a lot of of us who've actually had um you know thought about audio actively in that way because as long as it kind of sounds right you don't really notice the audio but once audio is done wrong that's when it jumps up at you and you know that's when we start thinking about what's obvious um yeah so it's definitely some interesting associations i can see that we've gotten a lot more questions um tuning into the chat but some of them are a little bit broader so i think we can continue to part two and then we can go back to some of the questions um when we wrap up the session yeah sounds good sounds good looking forward to it great great so i'm assuming you can see my screen again um part two how sound great so that was a bit of the why the funny stuff the the mouth sounds and all that but now let's talk about great how do we how do we kind of use these things uh how do i get started with all these ideas so think of it a bit like a cake uh all good things should be referenced to cakes um so as with the cake you know you start with some kind of recipe uh if you're making a nice cake say like a layer cake with lots of little layers then you've got to start with some kind of good recipe now the recipe i use for choosing sound for video is quite simple um it seems overly simplified but trust me if you kind of follow this three-step process um it'll get you yards ahead of you and you'll get to the edge launched uh but this already when i was making it to the first time i heard i im�� would have the full hung on it at the beginning of the video because i remember when i he'd been emotional message and that feeling. So do you need that? First of all, perhaps you don't. But if you want to make an emotional impact with your video, sound music is your answer. And ask what's the video's purpose? Is it a product launch? It tells you a lot about what sound and music to choose, because you have to reflect perhaps the product, perhaps the personality or characteristics of the product itself is that if it's a physical product, say, you can actually choose sound to pair with that. So it highlights that part of the video. For example, maybe it's a hero campaign where you just want to maximalize that emotional impact. Then music is your go to and it will, you know, tell you a lot on which music to pick, because depending on the narrative, what kind of emotion you want to evoke is very important. Or if it's an HR film. It leads me to the second question you have to ask yourself before choosing any of sound. Sound music is what emotion should it evoke the video? Because as I said a million times, is sound music is the emotional backbone. It sets the mood. It sets the emotion much more than visuals do. As you know, with, you know, in horror films, I didn't bring any examples, but I know you can imagine if you pause the music in a scary scene, it's probably not that scary anymore. Or if you go even further and you put funny music in that scene, it's probably going to be funny, right? And it is that way. There's millions of videos on YouTube where you can go nuts with looking at how music kind of shifts the mood and the emotion. But ask yourself, what emotion should we evoke here? So, for example, do you want to evoke a serious emotion? Well, that's one kind of music. Do you want to evoke a premium emotion? That's a different kind of music, perhaps more minimal, perhaps more contemporary. Do you want to evoke a fun or playful emotion? That's very different music. Thoughtful, perhaps reflective. Introspective. All these kinds of things. If you answer these questions beforehand, it's severely it's like a process of elimination. It reduces the amount of choices you need to make because you say, OK, we know this. We want the viewer to feel fun with this video. Great. Go to that kind of music and then they will feel that and it will really affect the message that's being told in the visual communication. So ask that question, what emotion? And then finally. What's its objective? Why are you making the video in the first place? It should have some kind of objective, right? Unless you're just trying to be super frequent and pop out one a day. But, you know, it should have some kind of perhaps you want to highlight a product. So it could be a million objectives. But if it's to highlight a product at one point, then build towards that product moment. Use the music to build towards that, towards a reveal. Use sound effects to kind of highlight when the product is revealed on the screen. Use sound effects to build tension rises like, you know, before it's revealed. There's lots of little simple ways that you can kind of. Answers that questions that can be answered by just asking yourself, OK, what's the main objective of this video? Don't have five objectives, just have one. Why is this video being made? Then use sound and music to highlight that in the video. Cool. So that's the recipe. Three simple questions. Sounds super simple, but I guarantee you this will get you much further. Than if you didn't ask answer them before going in. Great. So back to the cake analogy. Think of the layers as all the layers of the cake as different layers of sound, because as we talked about before, there's different layers of sound, right? Different categories of sound. So think of or build it up like a layer cake in a sense. The first being narration. Like I said, the tone of voice. You know, pacing, language, accents, they all affect how we perceive the message being told. So put thought into that. You probably if you have a brand identity, you probably have some kind of tone of voice or a set in place. There's a lot to pull from there, right? Next being music. That's the emotional backbone. Use music to dial in the emotion you want to evoke in the viewer. Next being sound effects. These are the things that happen throughout. Think of this as engagement to keep people engaged over time because videos are X amount of time. It's a time based medium. You don't want people to get bored, right? You want to keep them involved, keep their attention. That's what sound effects are really there for doing is pulling your attention back and drawing your attention to something on the screen. So if you have something moving across the screen, give it a subtle sound effect and people will watch that movement. It's quite amazing. Really draws you in. Or if a transition from one scene to another happens. Do a whoosh sound effect to mark that transition if that's important. So sound effects are really there to highlight certain things and make you look at certain places on the screen, but also to keep you engaged, engaged, engaged as the video goes on. Then, as we talked about before, diegetic sound, it's that realistic aspect. So if it's raining, put rain sound. It really pulls you into the world and makes you feel like you're actually inside the video. So these are the different layers. Now, let's go into some sound examples now where we actually hear what these different layers do and how it changes the feeling. So let's dive into some listening examples. First up being music. This is arguably the most important aspect of sound in regards to I'm sure a lot of the way you do videos out there is the choice of music, the choice of soundtrack. Very important. Why? Because it injects the emotion. But also it guides the emotion throughout. So if you have a climax, if you have some kind of narrative, use the music to follow that narrative, that storyline, the arc. So use the music to build towards a climax or some kind of reveal or to go down and be more introspective if that's needed at some point. That's what music's there to do is to hone in that kind of narrative story and message. And finally, remember, the music is there to appeal to the audience. If someone doesn't like the music, they'll turn away or they'll think it's not cool. But if it's something that appeals to them, they kind of like, they're much more open to the message being told, much more. So it's important not only to know your audience, of course, and the tastes, but just to be aware of that is a great step. Cool. So you can see in front of you a still image. Now, instead of using moving images, I just want to focus on sound, audio part of video. So I just want to use still images to kind of hone that in, that it's all about the sound and how it affects what you see, not the video itself. So we're just using still images. But you can ask yourself when choosing music, kind of two things, there's two avenues to go down, I would say. One way. So if you're going to use music for this scene in front of us, you could say, okay, do I want to portray what's happening on screen with music? And what's on screen in front of us is, let's have a look, it's spacious, it's dark somewhat, it's cold perhaps. It's kind of beautiful in a certain kind of beautiful way. I don't know, maybe melancholic. There's also a sense of isolation there. So you can say, okay, great. Therefore, choose music that pairs directly to that, what you see on screen. And this is one example of what that could be. Cool. So it kind of pairs nicely. Especially with what you see and exaggerates what happens on the screen. But what you can also do with music, the other avenue is to do something totally different and contrast what happens on screen. And it's kind of interesting to see what happens here. I'll play an example in a second. So why you would contrast it is to kind of evoke an emotion that's not on screen but something that's off screen. So it kind of heightens or elevates the emotion beyond what you see. So it kind of adds more intensity to something bigger, to something more interesting perhaps. Or yeah, it sparks curiosity more when you use something that's contrasting to what you see. So in this sense, let's listen to the example I've chosen and just see how it changes what you see a little. So here I feel a bit more curiosity at what's actually happening here. Maybe there's a bit more wonder. Hmm, something's a bit off. I don't know. Because it's not pairing what you see so well. So it sparks ideas, right? It inspires kind of thoughts. Perhaps there's more movement all of a sudden in the image. Where are they going? Where are they coming from? And there's definitely more mystery, right? Now these two examples, they were relatively close. I could have played you happy pop music and sad whatever music. It would have been much more obvious, right? These two examples were kind of close. They're both string instruments. But I hope you can see that even small changes like that really affect what you see, even when it's a still image. And you can imagine when it's moving, it's just exaggerated tenfold. So once again, diving back to the color part, music and sound, they really affect how we perceive what we see, right? As we just heard with these two examples. It kind of shifts what you see or the feeling or how you perceive what you see. Cool. Going ahead. Next one. Ambience. So ambience, that's the layer of sounds where it's if it were raining behind me, you would hear the rain. That's the ambience. It sets the scene. It's the backdrop, so to say. And it really puts the viewer inside of the video. So let's do the same thing. Let's listen to an example that really represents what you see directly. And that in this case would be perhaps wind sound. Now, if you want to make that's a realistic representation of what you see on screen. What you can do with sound as well, which is really cool, I think, is you can make a more hyper-realistic sound. So in this case, I've used an example of an earthquake, actually, the sound of an earthquake and just put that onto the scene and just notice how it changes what you see a little. So even though it's wrong, it's an earthquake sound on a, you know, on just an image of a tree there. It's not correct. But still, we kind of perceive it's tricking us. We're perceiving it as being even more vivid than the example before, more realistic almost, even though it's totally unrealistic. It's almost like it's vibrating you a bit more. So it puts you in into the scene much more than if you at least didn't have sound. Could you imagine if you didn't have sound here? You wouldn't feel any of those emotions. Cool. Then the same with sound effects. So these are the, you know, little sounds you use throughout the film to keep people awake. To keep people's attention, keep them engaged. Let's do the same here. So, again, I've used a still image of a shoe, but you can see it's in some kind of form of movement. It's like a paused shot of a shoe in some kind of product video. So let's do the same thing here. A realistic way of representing what you see could be, right? You can imagine it working and kind of portraying what you see. But then you could do the hyper-realistic way of representing the shoe moving. Perhaps bouncing, moving across the screen. And that could be something more like this. So all of a sudden, even just that simple stock image of the shoe becomes more powerful, more bold, more impactful just because the sound used was different. So, again, super simple ideas here. But hopefully kind of outlining that. Simple changes of sound can make a big, big difference in the long run. So, again, back to the recipe of the layer cake. Ask yourself what's its purpose? Like with the music example. What's the purpose of the scene? What are we trying to do here? What emotion should we evoke? So with the music example, was it curiosity, wonder, mystery? Or was it more the ambient nature of the realistic scene itself, the cold background? And then finally, what's its objective? So in that shoe example, if the objective is to highlight the shoe moving, being revealed across the screen in some kind of way, highlight that with either a realistic sound or perhaps hyper-realistic with that impact to give it that bold moment, something that really draws your attention in. Cool. So finally, I just want to talk quickly about a red thread because it's very important. In regards to your brand and how you sound and how you sound in your visual communication is much like with I'm sure you probably have some kind of visual identity or some kind of consistency at least in regards to how your visual communication looks within your brand. So that you're using the same colors across different videos, across different touch points and platforms. You have some kind of consistency there. Perhaps the same logos, same colors, same colors. Same graphics. Maybe same cinematography style. Right? And it's really important to have that consistency as I'm sure you're aware to kind of stand out because today more than ever it's important to be consistent across your different brand touch points in order to stand out. There's so much noise out there. There's so much content. We all want to stand out. We all want to stand out. And how to do that today is ultimately to be consistent. Because if you use now with sound like with visuals, if you use different styles from here to there across different touch points, no one will know which one is you. And therefore you will be perceived as sloppy, right? Every visual is different. Every sound is different. It's sloppy. No one will know which is you if all your touch points sound and look different. Whereas with sound what's super important is to sound consistent. And if you are consistent across your different brand touch points, you will stand out and you will be perceived as perhaps a little more. Right? So consistent use of sound, it communicates attention to detail, which ultimately leads to trust. And also this stylistic consistency across touch points, it kind of equals perceived quality because of that attention to detail. Super important. Now, finally, the most important thing in regards to sound is arguably silence. Today, silence is actually. A premium. People pay for retreats. People pay a lot of money for noise cancellation. So on so forth. So it's become a premium. It's become a luxury almost silence. But silence is what is used in video to command attention. Now, if everything's silent, your video is muted. Good luck getting any attention. I mean, but if you use silence within the video around amongst sound, you can really command attention in your viewers. So how do you use it? Use it in both ways. Start your video with sound and music. End it with sound and music and have a moment of silence. So this creates contrast. As we know, contrast is what commands attention. And also silence can really be used to highlight a climax in the video. The peak moment. Right? A reveal, say. It also makes you feel more premium. It's an easy way to feel premium because less is more nowadays. That's never truer than ever. Cool. So in summary, video is two senses, not one. It's sight and sound. Remember, 50% of communication there. Sound is universal, as we saw in the shapes and the colors examples. Branded sound is quite simple, so to say. You just convert your abstract kind of brand values into sound. It's super important to do. Then ask yourself before you make a video, before you use sound, what's the purpose of this? What should I do here? So plan before you execute and you're off. Great. Thank you. Fun to listen. We sit and work with video every single day to really highlight the audio sound. It's super insightful. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. It's been a fire happening in the chat, which is great. So we have a lot of questions and unfortunately we don't have time to go through them all. But I figured we could round off with one question from Maria. She's asking, what are the most common audio mistakes that B2B companies make when it comes to audio? So if you want to wrap up with some final thoughts, what's the biggest mistake B2B companies make and how to potentially avoid that? I would be curious. Yeah, it's a great question. We work a lot at Sonic Minds, the agency I work at, with B2B companies. So we work a lot with sound. B2B, same as B2C, again, sound is used to communicate emotion. So it's essentially the same thing. But I would say the biggest, most common audio mistakes, there's so many. I think dialogue is one, you know, recording quality. I think it's very important to just put a little bit extra into getting a good recording of voice, voiceover. Yes, it takes a bit of extra work, but it's relatively small. It's a small investment in the wrong one. But oh, my God, it communicates a lot. When something's poorly recorded or you can't really hear things so well, it really communicates poorly on the brand. So just a little, a little extra thought and time put into that. Yeah. Definitely. And I think that's a tip we can all bring with us into 2026 to remember to invest that little extra in a decent microphone so that your core message comes across and isn't interrupted by any white noise or any of those things. Yeah. And the music. Exactly. And then with a little bit of ambience and maybe some rainfall. I'm definitely going to think these into my next, my next digital event. So I'm very excited to see where all of this new information takes us. Fantastic. But thank you so much for being with us, John. And I hope that you are getting ready to gear up for a holiday season full of relaxation and friends and family. And thank you so much for taking the time to share all the tips and tricks. Everyone who's with us in the audience, please feel free to not do anything. You guys can just stay in the webinar room. You'll be automatically redirected. And in the next session, we will have scaling your video efforts with Yona and Rob, followed by the state of video with 23 co-founder. So stay tuned. You will be redirected and I will meet you guys there.