Into the Huluverse: The sonic evolution of Hulu

You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.

One of my absolute favorite Sonic brands is Hulu.

For listeners outside the US, Hulu is a streaming service that launched in 2008.

Over the years, they've used a lot of different Sonic logos, many of which I've really loved.

But if I had to pick a favorite, I'd probably go with this latest version.

To me, that Sonic logo is a perfect little story with a build-up, a crescendo, and a release, all told in just a few seconds.

When I hear it, I almost get a physical reaction.

My dopamine fires,

and I'm ready to dive into whatever comes next.

Now, Sonic logos go by a few different names.

Some people just call them sonics.

Quite often we call it a mnemonic.

That's Dan Kapstick.

I am head of creative at Dixon Baxi, a branding agency based in London, UK.

Dixon Baxy has worked with everyone from IMAX to Samsung to Hulu.

They help these companies design a more memorable and relevant brand, and that includes their Sonic brand.

A sonic logo by its makeup is often a very short piece of media, three or four seconds long at max, and you have a very limited time to play with to communicate what that brand stands for.

So it's possibly one of the hardest working pieces of music or sonic that there could possibly be in branding.

Yeah, from my experience like less is more.

My name is Matthew Wilcock.

I co-own and I'm the creative director at Zalek Sound, an original music and sound company.

Zalek has done sonic branding for companies like Hulu, Nike, and Amazon Prime Video, and they frequently work with Dan's team at Dixon Baxi.

When you're composing a piece of music, you're trying to get to the very root of the idea or the emotion.

And that starts with the brand itself.

We're kind of led by what they tell us they want the brand to be, and then we have to take that and translate that into an emotion.

For instance, Amazon wanted the Sonic logo for Prime Video to be vibrant and celebratory with a dash of entertainment.

They wanted to balance something small-scale and human with something epic epic and cinematic.

With all of that in mind, here's the prime video sound that Matthew's team designed.

You can think of Sonic logos kind of like the next evolution of the old-fashioned jingle.

Rise the Roni, the San Francisco treat.

Nowadays, the jingle isn't nearly as common as it used to be.

Instead, its younger, cooler sibling, the Sonic logo, has taken the spotlight.

Sonic logos have really rocketed in use over the last decade or so, as streaming platforms have really taken a hold and changed the way people view TV and film and content on their tellies.

Today, almost every streaming service has a Sonic logo, from the huge ones like Apple TV Plus,

to the niche ones like the horror platform Shutter.

What's super interesting to me about these entertainment Sonics, unlike any other Sonic, is that when you click on the service, you have to listen to this.

For a lot of branded sounds, you really only hear them in commercials.

You don't have to hear them if you're ordering McDonald's or going into the store.

On the other hand, Netflix is so popular Sonic brand because there is no way, 99% of the time, to interact with that product without hearing it.

But since users hear these sounds so often, if you're not careful, they can easily become annoying.

If you want to do the most memorable thing possible for your brand, you literally scream the brand name in the most simple melody possible.

But that's not going to sound like your brand at all.

Gunblux!

So it's not going to feel like your personality, like whatsoever.

With so many factors to consider, it's easy to see how a new streaming platform might go through several Sonic logos before they find one they want to stick with.

For Hulu, it all started in 2008, back when the company first launched.

Now, this was well before streaming became synonymous with Sonic logos.

Disney Plus, HBO Go, Apple TV Plus, and Prime Video were all still years away.

Netflix had only started streaming the year before and wouldn't launch their iconic to-doom sound for another seven years.

So in many ways, Hulu blazed blazed the trail with their original sonic logo, which sounded like this.

I feel like that sound really connects to kind of the baby Hulu, if you will.

I'm Reed Thompson, and I head up the brand creative team here at Hulu.

Reed says the goal of that first sound was to be bright and cheerful.

It was kind of the spirit of the friendliness and the more casual side of the brand.

But while it does sound nice, it's also a bit generic.

It could work just as well for a food delivery app, a kid's clothing brand, or an insurance company.

So in 2011, Hulu decided to make a new Sonic logo.

This time, they wanted to take inspiration from the word Hulu itself.

It's just a name that's fun to say and feels good.

But the meaning of Hulu goes much deeper than that.

It's a Mandarin word for a holder of precious things, which was a perfect fit for the company's mission.

Everybody has a mix of content that they love, and I feel like that's kind of at the core of the spirit of Hulu, finding the things that you love.

So Hulu created a second logo with four notes, one for each letter in their name.

You can hear still the warmth and the human quality of it, but also there's much more polish.

In the on-screen animation, the words Hulu originals appear in front of a wall that's lit by a sunset.

There was also a slightly different version with a sunrise.

In that one, the first two notes are a little faster and airier.

Both versions were meant to capture the calm and wonder of these magical hours, sunrise and sunset, but they still didn't quite feel powerful enough.

While everybody felt this was a very pleasant sound, it wasn't necessarily differentiating.

On top of that, Hulu wanted their next logo to match their new premiere content.

It came out around the same time as The Handmaid's Tale launched, which was another sort of defining moment on the content side for the brand.

And the ME goes to The Handmaid's Tale!

The Handmaid's Tale!

We really wanted to be be more cinematic and we really wanted to establish this evolution of Hulu.

In the end, they landed on this.

This was inspired by the sunset.

But really a much tighter sound.

Now, all of the logos we've heard so far were designed for Hulu originals.

In other words, you open the app, click on a Hulu original, and then you hear the sound.

But in 2017, Hulu added a dedicated sound for opening the app itself.

It featured a reversed washi chord that swells into a melodic resolve.

This sound launched in tandem with a big redesign for the app that went under the code name Bowie.

It involved color gradients that dynamically changed based on the show or movie you were looking at.

And so you can hear some of that gradient light sound in that Sonic piece.

By that point, Hulu was just seven years old, but they'd already gone through four completely different Sonic logos, and they still hadn't made the sound that we hear today.

To get to that, the creative team would have to answer all kinds of challenges.

Is the sound easy to remember?

Can you sing it back?

Does it have energy?

They'd face some tough criticism.

That sound and that big green flash at the beginning of everything really drives me crazy.

And they'd even need help from the robots.

This is the first time that I've been involved with using AI in the creation of a sonic identity.

That's all coming up after the break.

When I started this podcast, I expected to wear a few hats, like writer, host, and editor, but I never realized that I'd also need to be a merch manager.

It was a lot.

Thankfully, I found Shopify.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including everything from Mattel to Thrive Cosmetics to Kodopaxi.

Shopify has hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-use templates that make building a website feel less like coding and more like crafting.

Their AI tools help with everything from writing product descriptions to enhancing your photos.

When you're ready to spread the word about your products, Shopify's built-in marketing tools help you easily create email and social media campaigns.

Turn your big business idea into

with Shopify on your side.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash 20K.

That's shopify.com slash 20K.

Shopify.com/slash 20K.

And now for our first mystery sound of the year.

If you know what that sound is, submit your guess at the web address mystery.20k.org.

Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win one of our super soft 20,000Hz t-shirts.

And if you'd like to buy it outright, or one of our warm beanies or super soft hoodies, just go to 20k.org/slash shop.

In business, there's an idea that when it comes to better, faster, and cheaper, you can only pick two.

But what if there was a way to get all three?

With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, you can.

That's why companies like Kohir, Thompson Reuters, and Specialized Bikes have already made the switch.

OCI is the next generation of cloud technology.

It supports everything from infrastructure and databases to AI and application development.

And it runs it all in a high-availability, high-performance environment for less than you might expect.

So, what makes it faster?

OCI's block storage delivers more operations per second.

What about cheaper?

OCI costs up to 50% less for computing, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

And as for better, OCI customers consistently report lower latency and higher bandwidth than the competition.

This is the cloud built for AI and for whatever your business needs most.

Try OCI for free right now with zero commitment.

Just head to oracle.com slash 20K.

That's oracle.com slash 20K.

When you're running a business, hiring the right person can be transformative, but the process of hiring is often slow, messy, and overwhelming.

That's why Indeed is so valuable.

Indeed is a simple yet powerful hiring platform that brings everything into one place, including posting, screening, messaging, and scheduling.

Indeed's matching engine uses over 140 million qualifications and preferences to get your job post in front of the right people.

It even learns from your preferences, so the more you use it, the better it gets.

According to a recent survey, 93% of employers say that Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites.

There's no need to wait any longer.

Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

20,000 Hertz listeners will get a $75 job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Hertz.

Just go to Indeed.com slash H-E-R-T-Z right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Indeed.com slash Hertz.

Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring, Indeed, is all you need.

By the late 2010s, Hulu had become one of the most popular streaming platforms in the U.S.

And as the company evolved, so did their Sonic logo.

But around 2020, Hulu embarked on another big company-wide rebrand.

This was all connected to a project we worked on with Dixon Baxey called One Hulu.

We really wanted to create more of a cohesive, holistic, as I called it, ecosystem.

Part of this rebrand involved a new Sonic logo.

So Reed teamed up with Zelig and Dixon Baxi to craft a sound that could stand out among all the other streaming logos that had flooded the market.

At the time, Hulu's research showed that their existing logo just couldn't compete with their main competitors.

One of the things that had been identified was that that sound that we currently have was usually at the bottom of the list in terms of distinctiveness with HBO and Netflix up there at the top.

To start out, they took a close look at some of these other Sonic logos to understand what works about them.

For instance, they analyzed HBO's classic static angel sound.

One of the things that works there is the kind of contrast in the sounds, the whoosh of static, that noise at the start.

And that's contrasted with the beautiful synthy choral chord.

And they're two sounds which don't really live together normally, but then you create these two opposing sounds that make some kind of magic together.

Another thing these logos had going for them was flexibility.

You've got to consider what that sound is going to be rubbing up against.

It can't sound out of place in front of anything.

It's got to sound like it elevates everything that follows.

For example, the Netflix to Doom sounds great going into the Stranger Things theme song.

But it also works just as well before the theme for a comedy like Bojack Horseman.

After the team had assessed these other companies, they talked about what makes Hulu unique.

You know, among the streamers, we've always said it's sort of the most human brand.

There's a lot of red carpet brands, brands associated with older entertainment ideas, box offices and flicks.

Whereas Hulu is, since it was born of the aughts and the era of YouTube and even our name is a fun human lowercase name.

So the Hulu brand has always been about that kind of human connection to storytelling and the fun and love of television.

With this in mind, they took a close look at all of Hulu's previous branding.

Everything from digital advertising, out-of-home billboards, the platform itself, the user interface design, and of course the Sonic brand itself.

And all those things needed really to be brought back into a cohesive message or image.

Finally, it was time to actually create some new Sonic logos.

The sounds they created fell into three broad categories.

First up were the melodic versions.

Here's a handful of those.

Like the earlier Hulu logos, some of them had four distinct notes.

The next category was less musical.

Instead, these were built around punchy, dramatic sound design.

Finally, they did a series of vocal versions using the word Hulu.

Hulu.

Matt felt like this approach could be a great way to stand out among the other streamers.

None of them have vocals.

Like, none of them say their brand name.

So I was like, if we could get someone to say their brand name

in like an interesting way.

And that's what we tried to do.

This strategy has worked for plenty of other companies.

But in the end, they decided that hearing the name over and over would get too repetitive.

We think it's a fun word to say, obviously, but we felt like that was going just a little too far.

After months of work and dozens of variations, they landed on this.

That intro part with the portal.

We wanted it to feel like you were almost in an auditorium or in a theater, like something is bubbling in the surface and about to start.

You hear that at the beginning.

There's a glimmer of light.

Then there's a snap of energy.

The four letters of Hulu are represented with a really beautiful, almost xylophone woodblock kind of finger snap moment.

Happens in really quick succession.

Then you have this beautiful, nostalgic kind of chime.

It bursts force with this energy, and then that kind of sweeps past you as a visual, and the kind of sonic washes over you.

The ending feels quite open, like we don't resolve.

It just goes off into the ether.

That's an opening into something.

And then you push yourself into the Hulaverse.

Matthew and Dan were confident that they had captured the essence of the brand.

And when they brought it to the Hulu team, They responded really positively to it.

They loved this idea that there was this representation of broad, diverse, exciting content.

And then they loved that contrast with it snapping into the center and forming the logo itself.

And then they really enjoyed the way it felt like you were transported and pulled in towards Hulu at the end.

That journey is reflected in the sound's nickname.

The theme name at the time was Take Me There.

The name Take Me There came from the idea that this sonic logo was a gateway to entertainment.

Once it played, you were transported into the story.

And just like they had hoped, it sounded great when it came before one of their dramas like The Handmaid's Tale.

And it worked equally well before comedies like How I Met Your Father.

In the past, that would have been the end of the process.

But this time, Hulu wanted to try something new.

This is the first time that I've been involved with using AI in the creation of a sonic identity.

So we didn't use AI to generate anything.

We didn't use AI to guide our decision making.

But we did use it to test our final results.

They fed their new Sonic logo into an AI program from a company called Veritonic, which tested it across multiple categories.

So the AI uses certain metrics, certain aspects of sound design, emotional states and things like that to create a logo score.

Things like recall, is the sound easy to remember?

Can you sing it back?

It obviously knows how to figure that one out.

Authenticity, is it original?

Does it have energy?

Does it sound familiar?

Is it happy or sad?

Does it seem powerful and confident?

Is it relaxed?

Or is it unique?

The algorithm takes in all of these factors and gives the sound an overall score between zero and a hundred.

The team ran a bunch of different Sonic logos through the AI, including Apple TV Plus,

as well as Intel.

And it just allowed us to sort of build some evidence around the process and allowed us to see where those big Sonic brands live, how they perform, and then we could look at what we created and see how that stacked up against it.

You know, something like HBO,

scores of 56.

They also tested their last Hulu Originals logo.

The previous Hulu Sonic Identity was scoring in at 44, which was obviously in need of massive improvement.

And then came the moment of truth, running their new logo through the algorithm.

The new Hulu Sonic Identity came in at 65.

That's nine points higher than HBO's Static Angel.

I couldn't believe it.

It's like, yes, now I've got the proof.

The Hulu team loved it.

The AI scored it high.

But you can't please everyone.

And by everyone, I mean Reed's cousin.

After the logo went live, she was like, I love Hulu, but that sound and that big green flash at the beginning of everything really drives me crazy.

You don't do that stuff, do you?

I said, well, actually, yes, that is exactly what I do.

But at least I felt like, oh, at least she noticed it.

If you think about it, a reaction like that isn't too surprising.

Because for most people, a sonic logo isn't something you're going to love instantly.

Instead, it grows on you because of the experiences you have around it.

In this case, it's the shows and movies that you come to associate with the sound.

It's a long and very subjective process, and that subjectivity is why Dan prefers not to work with focus groups.

When it comes to Sonic branding, it really can suffer from subjectivity, so it's best avoided, in my opinion, really.

Things shouldn't be tested that way.

With projects like this, it can be easy to get too many cooks in the kitchen.

With a Sonic identity, you have to do it strategically.

You have to do what you feel is good.

You know, you're the creative agency.

You're the creative director.

So you have to have a vision for what you want to bring into the world.

Creating a great Sonic logo is a really challenging process.

You have those big highs where you're like, you're on the third sign-off meeting with the executive creative director and it goes amazing.

But then there's a bit of feedback that then you drop down and you think, oh, now I have to like re-up again to do a whole big batch of testing to get it to some other place.

So at every point, there's like you get to this point of valation and then you're like, oh, now I have to do it.

And then you get to another point and you're like, oh, like now I have to deliver it.

And then it's like, oh, now it has to test well.

And then there's always these kind of interesting moments throughout the journey.

It also takes commitment and continued strategy from the brand.

Part of the power of Sonic branding is using that branding consistently and correctly in the right places and not hitting people over the head with it constantly.

So being respectful about when and where you use it.

But when a Sonic brand really works, it can stick with people for decades.

The best Sonic logos really think about the viewer and their state of mind at that time.

Either opening an app or going into a piece of content, especially as everyone's sitting down, excited to get in there.

You have this great opportunity to really set an intention, a connection to the brand.

So it's an incredibly powerful tool, that sound, and we're not taking lightly the value of that moment.

20,000 Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of DeFacto Sound.

Find out more at de facto sound.com.

This episode was written by Doug Frazier.

It was story-edited by Casey Emmerling and Andrew Andest.

It was sound designed and mixed by Joel Boyder.

With original music by Wesley Slover.

Thanks to our guests, Reed Thompson, Dan Kapstick, and Matthew Wilcock.

To see more of their work, just follow the links in the show notes.

And you can follow me over on LinkedIn.

That's where I post my own personal thoughts about things like sound design and sonic branding.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

Thanks for listening.