Boop. Boop. Trillll!
On a crisp, clear morning last September, 10,000 Ukrainians — including hundreds of active and former members of the military — packed the starting line of the Kyiv Marathon. The event was a demonstration of normalcy and even defiance for the nation amid its ongoing war with Russia.
But last year, organizers made one small, yet crucial, change. Instead of the sound of a gunshot, the race began with a beeping countdown, followed by a cheerful, almost angelic, euphony of notes.
Part of the marathon’s efforts to accommodate those with post-traumatic stress disorder, the sound was created in collaboration with two Ukrainian artists, veterans, and creatives at Barking Owl, a Los Angeles- and New York-based music and sound design company.
To Barking Owl’s CEO, Kirkland Alexander Lynch ’14, the effort is just one example of the power of sonic branding.
“The music and sounds we hear play such an important role in how we feel about something,” he says. “In some cases, they can even make a difference in whether we participate at all.”
Growing up in West Philadelphia during the golden era of the city’s hip-hop scene, Lynch was always interested in music. He played violin and sang, hung out with recording artists at record labels like Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam, and even managed a friend who was a producer. Since childhood, he had dreamed of rising to an executive position, but it was hard to see how he would do that in the music industry, he says.
Instead, with parents who worked in health and social services, Lynch went to school to work in health care administration. When the 2008 recession hit, he decided to continue his studies, moving to Los Angeles for a master’s program in accounting.
But Lynch says that his education was never limited to traditional coursework. Early on, he devised his own plan — something like a personal rotational program — that would help him gain the variety of experiences he would need to someday run a health system.
“A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none — but oftentimes is better than a master of one,” he says.
Eventually, Lynch came to believe that knowledge of the law was a crucial missing piece in his skill set. As a student at Harvard Law School, he shot hoops with the Basketball Club and was a member of the Black Law Students Association. But his Harvard Law experience ended up being far more than he had expected — in fact, he says, it changed the trajectory of his career.
“My first year, I met one woman who wanted to do fashion law, and a guy who wanted to be the head of a sports team, another person who was passionate about the environment,” he says. “I saw how all these interesting people had decided to forge their own paths in industries they cared about, and I suddenly saw law school as a second chance. Because what did I care the most about? It was always music.”
He threw himself into the Entertainment Law Clinic, absorbing the advice and mentorship of Brian Price, then the clinic’s leader. Working with local artists confirmed that he had found the right path, he says.
That same year, Lynch won a coveted internship at Sony Music, rising at 4 a.m. in Cambridge to catch a train to New York City, where he spent two days each week working — and one night couch surfing — before he arrived home at 1 a.m., in time to start the week’s classes.
After graduation, Lynch landed a slew of music- and law-related jobs, working in global business and legal affairs under the general counsel of Universal Music Group and then as part of singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder’s management team.
“It was a four-hour conversation, and one of the most surreal experiences of my life,” Lynch says of his interview with the legendary musician. “The first two hours, we talked about business and my background, and the next two hours were just him playing the piano for me in his living room.”
A few years later, as touring came to a standstill during the pandemic, Lynch, mindful that there were still things he wanted to learn, moved on to Google/YouTube, where he worked on music licensing. It was here that he finally completed his self-imposed rotational program — and identified a huge unmet need in the music business.
“There’s a pain point for brands and creatives, which is finding music that they can use in their content without infringing on any copyrights,” he says.
After all, sound can make the difference between a video going viral — or falling flat, Lynch says. “Even if you did everything you wanted to do visually, but the sound isn’t there, it doesn’t connect, and you’ve still failed.”
Lynch started paying attention to audio companies that were doing unique things for their clients. Barking Owl’s name kept coming up, he says. He appreciated the company’s vision, which prioritized creativity and originality and valued diverse voices. And with the company’s founders looking to sell their business to focus on other ventures, Lynch says it was the “perfect opportunity” to put all his prior experience to work.
Today, as Barking Owl’s CEO, Lynch has continued to expand the company’s portfolio, which includes music, sound effects, and audio mixing for high-level brands, such as Apple, Beyoncé for Levi’s, Kim Kardashian’s Skims, KitchenAid, and Adidas UK. His team of creative professionals has worked on more than 30 Super Bowl commercials, sonically crafted a “Wicked”-themed in-person experience at Amazon headquarters, and become the first to provide sound for an ad for both the interior and exterior of the Las Vegas Sphere.
The idea is to connect a sound to a particular product or brand.
But what, exactly, is sonic branding? Lynch says that the idea is to connect a sound, or music, to a particular product or brand.
“It’s what I call the refrigerator test,” he continues. “If you’re looking for something to eat in the refrigerator and you hear something behind you on TV or on your phone and you know what it is — that brand has succeeded.”
Lynch says that part of Barking Owl’s value is delivering truly original sounds. “Our competitors will take an existing piece of music and simply alter it to get as close to it as possible without infringing on the copyright,” he says, adding that that subjective boundary still opens brands up to the risk of litigation.
Barking Owl’s composers are rarely given an existing piece of music. Instead, they work from briefs that help provide direction but don’t reveal the reference track, Lynch says, “delivering something unique, something the client doesn’t necessarily expect but winds up loving.”
Beyond his company’s commercial work, Lynch has another mission, part of a double bottom line that he calls “sound for good.”
“Our social impact also matters,” he says. “And there’s no reason that has to be isolated from our other projects.”
A year after a chance meeting with someone close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Barking Owl’s managing director received a call asking for help creating a starting sound for the 2024 Kyiv Marathon that would eschew the traditional gunshot.
The problem was that the marathon was less than a month away. With the clock ticking, Barking Owl’s lead sound designer, Gus Koven, threw himself into the task, quickly creating 50 different options with the help of two Ukrainian artists. They then worked with a Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychologist and psychoacoustic professionals from Ukraine to test the options on veterans, runners, and spectators.
The winning sound, which incorporated the trembita, a wooden horn associated with Ukraine, debuted just a few weeks later.
The successful effort — and the worldwide prevalence of gun violence — convinced Lynch’s team that they should play a role in getting rid of the starter pistol at other events. They are now working to expand what they are calling “Start Without a Shot,” which he hopes will culminate with a change at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
Barking Owl is expanding in other ways, too. Lynch wants to open a studio in Chicago and develop more international partnerships. He continues to champion the importance of sonic branding and says he hopes to steward his company to become the trusted audio partner of “the greatest brands in the world.”
For Lynch, the role is both a return to his roots — a love of music — and an embrace of the future, of the power of new ideas and technologies.
“People understand that they have to have music if they’re going to advertise,” he says. “But as we move into this digital age, we want them to see all of the possibilities that sonic branding holds.”