In 1996, people were just beginning to notice the World Wide Web. I spent a lot of time on the Web, taught myself HTML, and advocated for business to adopt it. (At the time, most business leaders rolled their eyes and wondered aloud, “Why in the world would we ever need a website?”) After guiding a web development project for a big tech company and speaking about the web at several conferences, I started getting calls from companies wondering if I could help them with their first efforts.

I left my employer and started my own consulting practice, which I ran for 21 years. Because the web was new and heating up, there was a ton of interest and not many communicators qualified to help.

If I were considering going out on my own today, I would focus my practice on something equally nascent and exciting: audio communication.

It has been five years since I first wrote about the growing role audio played in marketing and communication. Google had released an audio Doodle, NPR took a stab at viral non-podcast audio, Wikipedia was adding sound clips to bios, and the French national railway had unveiled a sonic logo.

Nearly two years ago, on my podcast, I interviewed David Meerman Scott about Signature Tones, the sonic branding studio he had just co-founded.

Today, the landscape has broadened significantly. If I were starting a consulting practice now, it would be a full-service audio branding endeavor. Consider just a few recent news highlights:

• Bose’s Frames sunglasses have inspired several Audio Augmented Reality efforts in the short time the glasses have been available. At this year’s Coachella festival, music lovers wearing Frames will be able to opt in to hear commentary about the music they’re listening to. Even more intriguing is an audio experience that lets you (virtually) walk with pilgrims along Spain’s Camino de Santiago. According to an article about the experience, ‘When a listener stands still, they can hear footsteps and voices seem to walk toward them from behind. If the listener wants to hear more, they can begin walking as well—creating the illusion of ‘latching’ a hiker to walk alongside them as the story unfolds. If they don’t want to hear anymore, the listener can stop, allowing the hiker to ‘unlatch’ and continue on with their journey until another hiker nears.’”
  
  
• Voice assistants, like Google Assistant and Siri, have become a default search channel. Nearly 60% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information and nearly 50% do so daily. By next year, half of all searches will be conducted by voice. It’s no wonder, then that Facebook is working on an AI voice assistant to work with its Portal (a competitor to Google’s Home Hub and Amazon’s Echo Show and Echo Spot) and its Oculus Virtual Reality hardware.
  
  
• Smart speakers are also becoming commonplace. One tech industry analyst firm estimates there will be 208 million smart speakers in use around the world by the end of the year and by next year, that number will overtake the number of tablets in use worldwide.
  
  
• Sonic logos are gaining steam, with companies like MasterCard and Pandora have deployed sonic logos and more are lining up to get one of their own.
  
  
• Amazon’s Alexa is now HIPAA-compliant, enabling it to work with protected health information. Early applications will let you use the smart speaker to schedule a doctor’s appointment and check on the status of a prescription. Hospitals and other health care providers will undoubtedly roll out Alexa these and other “skills.” Amazon has also introduced “infinite news programming” for the Alexa product line.
  
  
• Alexa for Business has made it drop-dead easy for employees to create custom voice apps.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Google has introduced the ability to replace the default voice of its Google Assistant (on the phone or the smart speaker) with that of singer John Legend. (I remember when an early GPS system let you switch to the voice of Monty Python’s John Cleese.)
  
  
• Pandora is testing interactive voice ads. You’ll be able to ask (with your voice, natch) for more information or skip the ad if it bores you.
  
  
• Nutella is testing a voice campaign in which consumers can use their assistants and speakers to request a free sample.
  
  
• All the talking we’re doing to our smartphone assistants and smart speakers is leading brands to begin to analyze how we’re saying things and what our manner of speaking means.
  
  
• And, of course, you have no doubt heard about the $500 million investment Spotify is making in podcasts; Pandora is also betting big on podcasting as a means of attracting and retaining listeners at a cost significantly lower than commercial music.

Pandora’s executive creative director, Lauren Nagel, spoke at this year’s South by Southwest about the need for every brand to consider sound as a key part of its initial strategy.” I couldn’t agree more—hence my wish that I were young enough to undertake another venture into a new business that helped companies strategize a comprehensive approach to audio.

There are plenty of companies out there that will produce audio for you and help you create a sonic logo. The real opportunity is to take a more holistic approach to the opportunity. How does audio fit into your content marketing? Your point-of-purchase? Your investor and community relations? Public relations? Internal communications? How do you integrate it with your other content? How do you make it all work together and then measure its impact?

Alas, between becoming Medicare-eligible this year and being deliriously happy in my job, I’m not seriously thinking about undertaking this effort. But somebody should. It’s a wide-open space that’s only going to get bigger, with more and more brands seeking specialists who can help.