Inside Brand Australia's Sonic Identity

Sarah, I'm going to start with you.

How do you even start to figure out what a whole country should sound like? What was the problem you were trying to solve? So it

is a huge process, and it really goes back to 2017.

So Australia had an enormously successful international brand for tourism.

and very, very well known for our beautiful natural landscapes, our incredible tourism destinations, but there was a real gap in our reputation.

What about our science and innovation, our technology, our businesses, our agricultural tech, our food and wine? And it was actually businesses and industry calling for a national identity that's not just focused on tourism.

So there was really a big gap in terms of our international reputation.

And if we wanted to stay competitive and keep building our economy, then businesses wanted to have a unified front for Australia internationally.

So I think that in some ways makes it a lot easier because it's not something that we're trying to impose on businesses.

and they um they were so engaged and the way that we we saw ourselves was enabling businesses so we are we are not leading them they are leading the work and we are enabling them to succeed so we set up we had a brand advisory council with some of the most prominent ceos in australia at the time chaired by andrew forrest We also had an expert brand advisory group from, we had creative agencies and a range of different types of organisations represented there.

And what we really had to think about, so we're such a diverse country, geographically, culturally, economically.

So how on earth do we create a brand that covers us and represents us in a unified way? So that's the problem that we were trying to solve.

And we then had that direction from the Brand Advisory Council, and we worked on, it's not just a look and feel, it's what, how do we act, and how do we speak, and what are the values that we're really trying to show.

And I think despite the diversity in Australia, we really can work out in a simple way, what are those values and what are we trying to communicate.

So We looked at it as, how do, how do we act? And what are those common themes? So, we build trust, we are creative and we're resourceful, and we believe in fairness and mateship.

And then our tone of voice, how do we speak? So we're friendly, we're optimistic, we're clever, we're dynamic.

Um, so they, they became the foundations of the brand and then it becomes, what are the representations? So we started with the visual look and feel that is trying to communicate those things.

And we have the beautiful kangaroo designed by First Nations agency, um, Balaringi.

And then the next step was to look at what does that sound like? So we weren't starting the sound sonic work from scratch.

We had that foundation to work from.