Is it coming home? No, it’s already home and we’re loving it. The Women’s Euro Championships is in full swing taking place on our home turf and our Lionesses are bossing it – nicely through to the semi-finals (at the time of writing) and even breaking the record for the biggest win in the 40-year history of the competition, annihilating Norway 8-0. Not something we tend to see as much in the men’s game.

But what the men’s game does have is its own sound – albeit an unofficial anthem, Three Lions (It’s Coming Home) is so closely associated with the team that even non-football fans know most of the words and what it stands for. It really captures the emotion of the competition and how the nation feels each time we dare to hold out hope that this year could finally be the one. 

The pop song Three Lions has become somewhat of a sonic brand for the England tournaments, in particular the Euros, which limits it to an extent – rooted in a certain time and feel. For example, its association with disappointment won’t be as suitable if the England men's team did, in fact, win. 

The difference with a sound that’s rooted firmly in the brand’s DNA is that it’s designed to grow and evolve with the team and reflective of its values – flexible enough to stand the test of time. 

Most songs in football are known outside of the game, despite the deep association that’s developed. Three Lions was a mere pop song, You’ll Never Walk Alone is a Rogers and Hammerstein hit from 1945’s Carousel. Therefore they start as borrowed sonic identities and as they get used by clubs what they stand for gets diluted. Do football fans care? Probably not, but it creates blurred lines for the brand and a lack of focus on the vision it helps bring to life.

If the women’s team was to develop a sound, they would own it – music that could tell the story of the team in the form of a long-form track, speaking to all of the different parts of their journey to date and the inevitable rises and falls of the future to come. It creates a unique music bed to build assets for varied communications, creating an ownable red thread across everything they do, harnessing a fresh perspective, breaking the norms and developing a new way of doing things. Very apt when you think how hard female football teams have had to fight to get the recognition they deserve and the coverage as top sportspeople. 

At MassiveMusic, we were honoured to be asked to create the sonic brand for the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The main challenge was to create a composition that both captured the innate prestige and excellence inherently associated with the Champions League, as well as a new bold and progressive anthem. Therefore, it was paramount to create something both players and fans could really connect with.

Crafting a sonic identity follows a proven formula that is helping the best-in-class brands create an ownable audio marketing asset that can be flexed to suit different mediums – whether a brand anthem heard as a team walks on to a pitch down to extending the equity across new platforms such as TikTok. The formula for ensuring what has been created really sticks is using expert sonic partners and making sure it’s used in the right way. Having a solid sound and music strategy that becomes indistinguishably yours also helps stand out in the noisy landscape that we are experiencing today and helps brands stay consistent across the plethora of audio-rich platforms and touchpoints.

Recall and long-term fame will be secured with a laser-focused eye on making sure everything comes from a distinct family of sounds. It doesn’t have to be just one anthem and a sonic logo but a way to brand every piece of music created moving forwards. If the sound strategy of the Women’s England team became as focused on the use of the sonic identity as a player stepping up to take a penalty, it would be on course to become an absolute sonic winner and in no time will be hummed, chanted, and sung along with the fans. 

In football, probably more than most other sports, the need for absolute authenticity is crucial. It’s why Three Lions has worked so well for so long. This means defining and placing core values at the heart so it’s immediately associated with what we know and love about the club. Look at other brands – we know that Volvo stands for safety and BMW is about performance. 

That’s why, at MassiveMusic, we developed the world’s first sonic branding tool, MassiveBASS, which allows for any combination of brand values and archetypes to be selected and helps us find the musical combinations that best reflect the brand in question. 

The Ipsos study Power of You shows that not only are sonic cues still heavily underutilised, they are also the most effective distinctive assets for gaining branded attention, beyond even celebrity endorsements and brand colours - and those that commit to working long-term with experts in the space start to truly understand why it's an ideal tool to shape and reshape a brand’s identity and improve recall, awareness and emotional connection.

If we were working with the Women’s England team, we’d be focused on tenacity, ferociousness, diversity, bravery and success – and then finding ways of bringing that to life through musical sounds that are reflective and authentically aligned. 

Rather than associated with 30 years of hurt (we wish it was just 30), it would be associated with what the team stands for – not just now but for many years to come – capturing the heart and the essence of the team rather than the circumstances it’s succumbed to.