Press

10.02.2009 - Holte

Marketing success for Sennheiser: Sound Logo Contest inspires music fans worldwide

The Sennheiser brand now has its own special sound. The audio specialist from Wedemark launched a competition to find a new sound logo for the company. The Sound Logo Contest also meant threefold success for Sennheiser’s marketing team. More than 600 musicians from all over the world submitted their sound ideas. Around 2,300 music fans voted for their favourite at the company’s website. And the winning sound sequence provided Sennheiser with an acoustic logo that perfectly matches the brand.

from l. to r. Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, Jérôme Quadri, Susanne Seidel

It could be be a mini melody, a compact sequence of notes or even a chord – the aim was to find a new sound logo that sticks in your mind and embodies the same high quality as the Sennheiser brand itself. In order to find the perfect acoustic logo for the company, the marketing strategists from Sennheiser combined their search with a competition. The Sound Logo Contest was also aimed at involving as many music fans as possible in the Sennheiser brand. The contest was supported by Hamburg-based music producers HASTINGS media music. And the idea really took off: “More than 2,000 suggestions were submitted,” said Susanne Seidel, President Global Marketing. “We were thrilled by the response. The quality of the sound ideas even

exceeded our expections by far.” The winner of the contest was Jérôme Quadri from France. The crystal clear piano notes and the catchy, peaceful melody impressed the jury. 

  
Focus on marketing activities on the internet
Most of the marketing activities relating to the competition were focused on the internet. The central point was the Sound Logo microsite set up in six languages by the Hanover-based internet agency WM Team. Sennheiser used online banners, e-mails and a newsletter to draw the attention of professional musicians and amateur composers to the competition. This is also how Jérôme Quadri heard about the contest: “I came across a link to the Sennheiser Sound Logo Contest and the idea appealed to me immediately.” The agency Tribal DDB from Hamburg distributed targeted information about the contest in a ‘seeding action’ in German-language online forums. “Our aim was to motivate people to talk about the contest and to inspire composers, DJs and others to take part,” explained Uwe Cremering, Manager International Branding/ New Media and co-initiator of the competition. “We also spoke directly to the target group at music colleges and trade fairs. The three fairs in the USA (NAMM Show), Europe (ProLight+Sound/AES) and Asia (Palm Expo) formed the basis of our face-to-face communication activities.”
 

“Our cooperation with Sennheiser subsidiaries and partners also went excellently,” Cremering continued. It was also very successful. Musicians from Japan, Canada, Venezuela and around 50 other nations uploaded their sound creations to the Sennheiser website. For them, the prospect of composing the sound logo for one of the world’s leading audio specialists was particularly attractive. A further key incentive was the prize of 5,000 euros, plus an additional 30,000 euros for the user rights to the logo.
  

Internet users as part of the jury
The jury was made up of top professionals: Paul Sandweiss, one of the most famous American sound designers, and Jon Thornton, Head of Sound Technology at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, judged the entries together with the two Sennheiser representatives, Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and Susanne Seidel, President Global Marketing. The fifth jury vote consisted of the results of the online voting. In the end, the jury chose Jérôme Quadri’s sound logo as the winner. “When I heard that I’d won, I was really surprised,” said the French composer. “For me, it’s something very special to have won the Sound Logo Contest at Sennheiser, a company with such an outsanding reputation in the audio sector.” Quadri intends to invest his prize money in new equipment for his small sound studio. “The contest has inspired me to spend more time on music as my hobby and to try out new ideas.”
 

During a workshop at the company’s headquarters in Wedemark, the logo was further developed to allow it to be used by Sennheiser in various forms in the future, for example as telephone waiting music, in advertising or on the internet. “Each version shows a different side of Sennheiser,” said Quadri, who was highly impressed by the different variations of his composition. The contest will have its finale at the end of March 2009 with the official presentation of the new Sennheiser sound logo. 
 
 
The Sennheiser Group, with its headquarters in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems. The family-owned company, which was established in 1945, recorded sales of over €395 million in 2007, 83% of which were generated abroad. Sennheiser employs almost 2,000 people worldwide, around 55% of whom are in Germany. Sennheiser has manufacturing plants in Germany, Ireland and the USA, and is represented worldwide by subsidiaries in France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark (Nordic), Russia, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Japan, China, Canada, Mexico and the USA, as well as by long-term trading partners in many other countries. Also part of the Sennheiser Group are Georg Neumann GmbH, Berlin (studio microphones), K + H Vertriebs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (Klein + Hummel studio monitors, installed sound) and the joint venture Sennheiser Communications A/S (headsets for PCs, offices and call centres).

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