pelican sound is a creative audio design studio based in Scottsdale, Arizona. You may not have heard of them, but there's a chance you've heard their work.

After collaborating with companies like Peloton, Spotify, and Aritzia through word-of-mouth alone, they were ready to establish themselves as a brand.

The challenge? Differentiate a small studio in a market dominated by large agencies in LA and NYC – without pretending to be one.

"Your brand needs to be audible," "the world is loud," "…cutting through the noise," three concepts that would appear nowhere on the site after studying 70+ pages of competitors' website copy.

The angle we landed on came from a deep dive into how the human brain processes sound.

Sound is the only sense your body has no control over. You can put on sunglasses, avoid an itchy fabric, skip the cilantro – but you can't stop your eardrums from vibrating. Which means it doesn't matter if your brand is audible if it's not the right sound.

That one insight, found between books on sound design and neuroscience, became the foundation for their positioning, website copy, and verbal identity.