CASE STUDY
Sonic Identity: Salesforce
How a six-note mnemonic became the backbone of a global brand's sound.
When Salesforce needed a sonic identity that could scale across product launches, events, and platforms, the brief wasn't just “write a jingle.” It was: build a sound system flexible enough to live everywhere the brand does.
The Salesforce Sonic Logo — six-note mnemonic across styles · composition & sound design
THE HARDER PROBLEM
CONTINUITY AT SCALE
A mnemonic alone doesn't solve sonic branding. The real challenge is making one identity feel coherent across dozens of disconnected projects, teams, and timelines.
The approach: treat every new project not as a blank page, but as a chance to repurpose and recontextualize elements from what came before. A texture built for one product launch might resurface, reworked, as the backbone of an event stinger a year later. A rhythmic motif built for one platform gets pulled into another, filtered through a different arrangement.
This recursive process — pulling threads forward, project to project — is what kept the identity feeling like one voice, even as the work spanned eight years, dozens of stakeholders, and every format from broadcast to UI sound.
01 — THE SPARK
Einstein Voice Assistant
Notification sounds built for a new AI bot became the base case for the brand's sound.
02
Tableau Analytics Ident
Einstein's sound palette gets repurposed to build a new product's identity.
03
Dreamforce Virtual Event
The same SFX language becomes transitional material for a global livestream.
04
Brand Film & Beyond
Score and SFX interweave seamlessly — the sound of Salesforce, fully matured.
Rinse and repeat over time, stay consistent, and evangelize the brand sound.
CASE STUDY
Einstein Voice Assistant
Einstein Voice Assistant let users conversationally interact with the Salesforce platform through the mobile app or smart speakers — announced at Dreamforce 2018 and piloted starting with the Winter 2019 release.
Einstein Voice Assistant let users conversationally interact with the Salesforce platform through the mobile app or smart speakers — announced at Dreamforce 2018 and piloted starting with the Winter 2019 release.
I led sound design on the notification sounds for this interactive Einstein bot — a category-redefining project that turned Alexa into a sub-branded interface, reducing the friction of using the Salesforce platform. It was ambitious: we were working with a category of device that's become commonplace today, but was still being defined in real time.
One basic mode of evolution is to repurpose an existing thing for a new need — the way a front limb becomes a wing. These sounds became exactly that: the base case for the sound of Salesforce, resurfacing in projects from film to broadcast, events, and products.
Tableau Analytics Ident · sound design
Einstein's sound palette gets repurposed to build a new product's identity — the same building blocks, arranged for a different context.
SOUND FOR PRODUCT & EVENT
BUILDING THE LANGUAGE
Using the notification sounds from Einstein as a starting palette, the identity became easy to iterate — stitching a consistent sonic language across everything that followed.
Dreamforce Virtual Event · sound design & mix
Dreamforce is normally the largest tech conference in the world, attended live. When the pandemic made that impossible, we took it to the public as a virtual event — the same SFX language now working as transitional material in and out of interviews and presentations for a global livestream.
The Google Invite · score, sound design & mix
Score and sound design built from the same SFX vocabulary as Einstein, woven seamlessly through the transitions. Through repetition, consistency, and repurposing, every project contributes to the equity of the brand.