In June 2020, 37 years after its foundation, Banca Ifis changed its image, reinventing itself in line with its identity and adopting an "audiobrand identity", validated through neuroscientific tests. Banca Ifis was the first bank in Italy to do so.
An effort was made to create a kind of sound DNA for Banca IFIS's rebranding starting from an in-depth study of the Bank's history and future positioning purposes.
To create this sound DNA, sound timbres, effects, notes and frequencies were identified. Once assembled, the brand concept was identified and translated into audio in a few notes recognizable even with closed eyes.
The starting idea was that the audiobrand should convey "dynamism, solidity, authenticity, elegance and familiarity" generating an audio proposal as synergistic as possible with these brand attributes. All this involved generating several artistic proposals and using a scientific testing process that was not mainly influenced by personal tastes.
The project involved many professionals, including: the communication agency Fluendo, the creative agency specializing in musical stimuli (Concerto Music) and BrainSigns. The creation of the audiobrand required 100 days of work, five music production studios, 230 hours of recording in three studios, a polyphonic orchestra with 32 violins, 6 pianos and more than 40 musicians.
BrainSigns measured the impact of possible new Banca Ifis audio brands using implicit association techniques (Implicit Association Test, IAT) to assess the mental and unconscious associations elicited by two audio logo proposals and a musical theme towards the 5 brand attributes that they wanted to communicate (dynamism, solidity, authenticity, elegance and familiarity).
The test was conducted online due to Covid restrictions (May 2020). 400 people from across Italy took part remotely. They listened to the sound stimuli in tests and their reaction times in associating them with the brand attributes were measured. In other words, while listening to the two audiobrands and the musical theme, researchers measured how quickly participants associated the audio stimuli with words more or less related to the proposed values.
Among the two possible audiobrands, it was possible to select the one that showed the strongest associative results with the values that Banca Ifis mainly wanted to represent.
As for the musical theme (intended to be used as a soundtrack for major events or advertising communications) it was strongly associated with each attribute / value. It was confirmed for its coherence between the musical composition and the values that the Bank’s rebranding aimed to express.
