CLIENT
Thumbtack
Music and Audio Branding
ROLE
Thumbtack: Recommendations
Thumbtack connects homeowners with the right pros fast.
When they came to us for their recommendations campaign, the ask was focused: music for three spots and a branded audio moment to close each one.
The Audio Signature
THE BRIEF
Thumbtack needed original music scored to three TV spots plus an audio signature to anchor the branded end card. The tagline: "we know homes."
The creative challenge was finding a sound that felt warm and domestic without being generic. A straight doorbell was off the table because homes.com already owns it. We needed something that referenced home without borrowing from it wholesale.
THE APPROACH
We built the signature around a three-note melody — G, D, C — mirroring the rhythm of "we know homes." The instrument: a recorded doorbell chime but played it in a unique pattern.
The timbre says home. The melody says Thumbtack.
We layered in home sounds: a bolt lock clicking, water running, doors opening, and a kitchen drawer to give texture and motion to the logo animation.
Over three rounds of iteration, we explored six different signature concepts: melodic mnemonics, word-phonetic signatures, match-cut transients, even signatures designed to survive a YouTube skip. In the end, the warmth of the doorbell chime won out.
THE RESULT
We delivered two final audio signature variants alongside scored music for all three spots. The signatures were built for immediate use and designed with a longer life in mind; usable across video ads, pre-roll, audio ads and any branded moment where the Thumbtack logo appears.