When you create sound, you change how people experience the world.
MANIFESTO
THE PROBLEM WITH SOUND
Most brands treat it like an afterthought. Decisions are often justified with confident, sweeping claims. The kind of claims that sound smart, sell fast, and collapse under scrutiny.
"This tempo makes people buy."
"This chord makes people trust you."
"This sound guarantees recall."
Too often, confidence is confused with evidence. When sound is judged by gut feel, likeability, or pseudo-science, it only adds more noise into people's lives.
We exist to help creators put sound into the world that helps rather than harms.
We replace intuition with evidence, ensuring that audio becomes a strategic asset rather than an aesthetic gamble. Brands deserve more than mythology. People deserve more than noise.
01 · PRINCIPLE
Sound is a brand signal
A sonic identity isn't "nice." It's what the brand stands for, expressed through audio.
02 · PRINCIPLE
We measure what people feel, not just what they say
The most important responses to sound happen below conscious awareness.
03 · PRINCIPLE
We respect context
Sound never lands in a vacuum. It lands in real human moments. Busy, distracted, stressed, vulnerable.
OUR CREDO
We evaluate everything we do against a single criterion that doesn't show up in a p-value:
Does this sound help or hurt the human experience?
That should be your standard too.
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
Agencies who meet the standard
A place on this list is earned by evidence. We have tested these agencies' work directly, with the same implicit methods we bring to every study. Their sonic identities, music strategies, and audio-led brand experiences consistently help the human experience. That is our credo, and their work meets it.
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OUR FOUNDER
Joe Sauer
Joe Sauer is the founder and CEO of EmotiSphere Insights. He has spent his career moving between sound studios and research labs, working on a single question. How does a sound change the way people behave, and what does that do for the brand attached to it? His work gives creative teams a way to answer that without giving up the craft that makes sound worth listening to.
Joe pioneered the adaptation of implicit association testing for short-form audio and has since extended it with neurometric and biometric methods. His work on Nissan’s Canto won the 19th Annual EXPLOR Award for innovation in marketing research. He has helped bring audio identities to market for brands as diverse as Abbott, AT&T, General Mills, Lexus, and Vodafone.