Noiseboard

Background

Noise International is a sound studio based in Sydney. They wanted to grow their business by becoming the top-of- mind sound studio for agency creatives. In the short-term, to attract them to Noise’s biennial inter-agency ping- pong tournament; and in the long-term, to generate work leads for Noise.

Idea

Noise wanted to let creative people know that they empathised with them, that they knew how it felt to come up with brilliant ideas only to have them trampled underfoot by uncaring account teams and brutal clients.

To demonstrate both their understanding of the ups and downs of life in an agency and their own expertise in sound design, a series of personalized posters were created and hand- delivered to 48 agencies in Sydney.

Each poster showed the agency’s name as a soundprint. The url drove viewers to the website where they watched an animated video about the highs and lows of the average creative person’s day with music and sound effects created by Noise.

The Noiseboard was launched with nine categories, each containing three sounds, grouped according to the typical aspects of life as a creative. There was a sound for everything, from realizing the creative brief was a turd, through to how hard it is to come up with a Cannes-worthy idea through to sending a bitching email to all staff. 

Results

The idea was well received by the Sydney creative community. 20 of Sydney’s top agencies took part in the ping-pong tournament: a response rate of over 40%. There were over 1,400 visits to the Noiseboard website and a 355% increase in hits to the Noise International site upon campaign launch. All with no paid media. 

Our Thoughts

One of the criticisms of Directory has been that we publish the mickey- mouse work of our mates rather than case studies of campaigns that really deliver sales and bottom-line uplift.

Guilty as charged! We have long admired M&C Saatchi Sydney and Hamish Stewart is a valued friend.

However, to think this is mickey mouse work is simply not true.

The service industry that has grown up around advertising is intensely competitive. In Sydney, recording studios feeding off the major agencies would have come and gone with the same bewildering speed as they have in London.

A studio is not cheap to set up and to maintain. A sound engineer expects to earn a lot more than a doctor. So keeping a business of this sort afloat doesn’t just require bloody hard work to keep it relevant and salient, it demands creativity.

You, dear readers, are an incredibly valuable target audience. Which is why I love this. It demonstrates real understanding of you, the people it is aiming to seduce and influence, and of the crazy nature of our industry.

Also, it tickled me that on the video they paid homage to the Art of Noise, using the 80’s band’s “Moments in Love” as the soundtrack.