This past June, our founder and the most prominent composer in the world of audio branding, Jonathan Elias was invited to speak at TEDxCulverCity about the role of music in advertising and beyond.
Performing and composing since childhood, Elias began his professional career while still in college, scoring movie trailers for Alien, Blade Runner, Gandhi, and Back to the Future. In the 1980s, he began working with popular acts such as Duran Duran and Grace Jones while simultaneously making a shift into the music for advertising world with the co-founding of Elias Associates – now Elias Audio Branding.
Over the past 40 years, Elias has created iconic Audio Identities for brands like Farmers Insurance, Columbia Pictures, MTV, Yahoo, and Liberty Mutual. That’s right – the man who wrote “Liberty Liberty Liberty” also wrote “We are farmers.”
Throughout his TEDx Talk, Elias shares examples of these works to demonstrate how music can affect our memory and emotions, giving a behind-the-scenes look into the composition of classic Mnemonics that you’ll never forget, even if you wanted to. He also shows how sonic branding can define the life of a company and influence wider culture, concluding with an impromptu creation of a TEDx Mnemonic.