Hear the sizzle of success with Mango.org’s new audio identity

Mango.org is a diverse group made up of growers, grocers and shippers, distributors, marketers, researchers—and so much more—on a mission to inspire and educate U.S. consumers about the culture, flavor, and nutrition of the world’s most versatile superfruit—the Mango!

 

 

The Challenge

Mango.org wanted an audio identity to complement Mango.org’s bold and fun visual identity, as well as help spread word of the Mango. The audio logo needed to be catchy and memorable while still portraying the key attributes of the Mango brand. Mango.org wanted to create an identity so strong that it would become instantly recognizable while still having the flexibility to expand worldwide over time.

Besides recognizability, Mango wanted the audio identity to feel global, as the mango fruit is grown throughout the entire world. Therefore, we needed the audio identity to not only highlight the roots of the mango fruit, but also do it in a way that didn’t place the listener in one specific geographical location.

We chose to collaborate with Jorge Ramirez-Escudero for this project because of his vast knowledge of the musical style that we were going for together with Mango.org. He has vast experience in working with advertising agencies, music production houses, film & TV studios as well as artists from all over the world, having composed many styles of music to film, commercials, TV idents, videomapping, theater and dance. In addition, his work has also been shown in museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), The New Museum (New York) or Galería Vermelho (São Paulo) as well as at MIT, TED Talks, Dakar Biennale, SXSW or the Amsterdam Film Festival.

Melodically speaking, it was important for the main melody to be positive and singable, something many people could hum or sing together with ease. Overall, the sounds had to immediately put you in a good mood.

Regarding his involvement in the process, Jorge said the following;

“I always enjoy it when I’m involved from the get go with the concept of a project, because it allows you to make a deep dive into the machinery of a brand’s audio identity.”

Insights

When starting on the project, we immediately knew that we wanted to incorporate recordings of mangos. A mango can produce all sorts of sounds, like squishing, cutting the skin, rolling and much more. We wanted to experiment with all of these sounds in subtle ways, in order to add some texture to the logo.

In order to get the most global feeling, we also experimented with a variety of regional instruments, especially in the percussion department as they can be added more subtly than melodic instruments. Among some of the instruments that we used were Cuban Congas, Brazilian Surdo and a Persian Santur.

Jorge had this to say about the research behind the instrumentation;

“I used Google Maps a lot.”

Jorge elaborated;

“I loved the fact that I had to come up with a narrative (…) that described the historical transition the mango fruit made from Asia to the Americas. Studying the different types of music typical of each region and having to gel them together to make a tune that sounded cohesive as well as heterogeneous was an absolute delight. I’m a huge fan of Asian, African as well as South American music and having to use elements typical of those regions to describe the route the mango followed historically and geographically was something I’d never done before and enjoyed immensely.”

Another concept we explored was the use of the human voice. We tried different sized choirs, ranging from soloists to entire crowds. We found that when hearing chanting sounds, especially from a group of people, you instantly felt more connected to the brand. As we wanted the melody to be accessible, we chose not to use any words or specific language.

Together with Jorge, we explored what it was about the nuts and bolts of the music, including melody, rhythm, timbre and harmony that helped convey the message of the brand. We discovered that having multiple rhythms playing together worked well in giving the brand both personality and complexity, while still being easy to understand. Jorge concurs;

“The melody also had to have something of a groove, a mild syncopation, a little bit of a “sun-drenched tropical hip” movement (…)”

A Fruitful Venture

Audio Logo

As preservers of one of the oldest fruits in the world, it was important for Mango.org and us to respect the rich history of the Mango, and its future of innovation within cooking. Jorge had this to say in terms of his respect for the heritage;

“I hoped to bring all these sounds and cultural references with the utmost respect and care.“ “ (…) without falling into the pitfalls of a comedic/novelty tone, into which many approximations to world music sadly incline towards. “

Jorge elaborates on the instrumentation used;

“It is because of this that you will here the sitar, the tanpura and the tabla, from India, the Persian santur, the darbouka from North Africa, the Malian kora, the djambé from sub saharan Africa, the batucada from Brazil as well as the Cuban tres guitar, congas or latin jazz brass section.”

The logo uses the key of C major, which is often viewed as the key of happiness and positivity. To express unity and joy, a mixed and diverse choir sings together in harmony. The use of the vowel “O” is a slight nod to the name of the brand. Finally, we integrated a mix between subtle mango recordings, such as slicing, dicing and spicing a mango, as well as some tropical bird ambiences for the adventurous and nostalgic feel. Jorge agrees;

“(…) a mango is: a juicy, sweet, tasty, nutritious, versatile, sensual fruit that should have music that supports those concepts. The music required would necessarily be music that you can feel and touch with your own hands (hence the heavy use of acoustic sounds)”

This leads us onto the full brand track that we created. The brand track is an extended version of the audio logo, and a delicious blend of contemporary genres.

Listen to the audio logo below.

Music Toolbox

From the Mango.org audio logo DNA we composed a brand track and from that a music toolbox to be used in films and social media content.

While the audio logo is acoustic, the brand track aims to highlight the more modern aspects of Mango. Deep electronic bass kicks and crisp trap-inspired hi-hats are combined with acoustic instruments from the logo, as well as other instruments from various parts of the world.

Besides avocados, mangos are now one of the first fruits to have its own expressive audio identity.

Jorge concludes;

“(…) a brand identity that, hopefully, will have a long and fruitful (pun intended) life… That for me in itself [was] a huge and attractive challenge.”

Have a listen to a snippet of the music track below.