The Sound of a Unicorn

I only remember Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi odyssey Close Encounters of the Third Kind in sketches: a tortured Richard Dreyfuss carving landscapes out of mashed potatoes, a maniacally thrashing house mid-abduction, a morning-robed Teri Garr caught between poise and perplexity. But I will always remember the sound. You know the sound: Re-Mi-Do-Do-So!!! It's John Williams' signal of first contact, a cosmic "hello" to something extraordinary. Heard out of context, decades later, it still delivers the feeling: that majestic, aching yearning for connection. That's the power of sound. It outlasts everything else.

Brands have known this for a long time. NBC's three-note chime has been orienting audiences since 1929. Duracell's percussion built a reliability cue into the background hum of childhood. And now the form has evolved. Netflix's ta-dum turned a two-second moment into one of the most recognized sonic signatures on the planet. From full jingle to micro-sting, the continuum has always been the same: the right sound makes a brand feel like something and then makes you feel something—every time you encounter it.

That's no longer a nice-to-have. Sonic identity is now one of the fastest-growing investments in brand marketing. The global sonic branding market reached $1.12 billion in 2024, with a projected growth rate of 13.9% annually through 2033 (GrowthMarketReports). As the landscape grows more fragmented across earbuds, smart speakers, video feeds, and AI interfaces where visuals don't always follow, sound has become the one brand element that travels everywhere. When you can't guarantee a logo placement, you can still own a feeling.

At Digitas, we believe in Networked Experiences, earning our way into people's lives, hearts, and habits, not forcing our way in. So it felt right to ask: what does a Unicorn sound like?

To find out, we partnered with Elias, a renowned sonic branding studio, coincidentally also born in 1980. And what a year to be born: CNN launched and changed how the world consumed news, Apple debuted a new product that would redefine personal technology, and Pac-Man took the world by storm. A single year when technology, entertainment, gaming, and media all hit the scene and never looked back. It was a formidable moment to launch a digital-first modern marketing agency, and that founding energy—curious, inventive, unafraid of what's   next—still runs through everything we do. Elias brought that same spirit to our collaboration. They've shaped the sonic identities of brands like Columbia Pictures, and they brought the same rigorous creativity to ours. What we made together is fearless, inventive, and a little generous, with a touch of Blondie's Call Me street credibility, that 1980 energy of something new breaking through.

It's designed to be truly multimodal: a short burst that signals “Let's begin” when you walk into a room, a longer form that opens the next Digitas content release, an acoustic handshake built for collaboration. Flexible enough to live across every context. Distinctive enough to travel.

While we may never compete with John Williams, we’re simply daring to stand apart and staking a sound to something worth finding.