Crunchyroll

We started with in-depth discovery, including competitive research in the realms of streaming, entertainment, and beyond, as well as collaborative stakeholder discussions and creative moodboarding. We then distilled insights from this process into strategic principles that could guide our exploration:

Armed with strategic principles and initial creative concepts, we then set about exploring a wide range of sonic possibilities. We dove deeply into vast corners of Anime, immersing ourselves in it’s sonic universes. We emerged with ideas for how to inspire the Anime community, and set out to create a sound that represents their diverse passions. We explored richly layered cinematic swells conveying a portal to a new world, mischievous and playful vocal collages that represented Anime fan voices, and even references to the Anime-adjacent genre of lo fi hip hop, before landing on a final direction. The final Crunchyroll sonic, called Cicada Smash, features an expansive swell that scores BUCK’s dynamic and engaging visuals while telling a story about the brand.

To capture the breadth of Anime as a medium, we drew inspiration from the brand's visual identity, especially their "Glyphs" inspired by the world of manga. We created specific sounds and textures to correspond to certain Glyphs from the design language, helping to capture the vast universe of stories, moods and styles that anime has to offer.

To create the final mnemonic, we combined a sound collage made of sonic Glyphs, harmonic elements to add emotional depth, and an iconic Crunch texture that serves as a calling card for the brand.

These gestures were sculpted into a singular expression that could build suspense for a brand forward payoff. Our goal was to capture attention with an impactful opening gesture, while leaving room to grow in intensity, before ramping up suspense and, finally, resolving to an iconic payoff.

Finally, we packaged all sonic assets up and mixed and mastered them to sound immersive and impactful across all speakers and listening environments, from a smartphone to a cinema. The sound of Crunchyroll is a key part of their new brand identity, setting them up to capture attention, set the right tone and build brand equity anywhere that they make sound.