Episode Details

“You know, the Dr. Pepper jingle, a year ago, there was that jingle. So I’m not going to make any claims that the jingle itself isn’t great. It’s a great jingle. And I do think if you analyze it, there are a lot of ways you can dissect it to actually properly represent Dr. Pepper. But I do think that the main reason it became so viral and people are still linking it to Dr. Pepper is the roll-out strategy, even though it wasn’t intentional. I believe she was an influencer or an Insta or a content creator on social media who recorded a song on her phone. And there was this whole thing. It went viral and they published it in the Super Bowl or whatever it is. But I really think it’s the roll-out that made it so big.” – Sami El-Quqa

This week’s guest is the founder and CEO of MusicGrid, a leading sonic branding agency serving brands across the GCC and wider MENA region. With over a decade of experience in the music industry, he blends creative expertise with strategic business insight to help organizations translate their brand identity into sound. A graduate of Berklee College of Music in Contemporary Music Composition and Production, he also holds a Master’s degree in International Business Management, specializing in music licensing and intellectual property in the digital age.

He’s worked with over three hundred brands across government, financial, and commercial sectors, leading projects that position sound as a core driver of brand recognition and emotional connection, and he’s contributed to copyright legislation in Kuwait while regularly participating in regional industry events as a speaker and advisor, shaping the future of sonic branding in the Middle East.

His name is Sami El-Quqa, and in this discussion, we’ll be discussing why sound is a brand’s most unavoidable tool. He’ll reveal how to cut through marketing noise, the psychology behind sounds we can’t forget, and the secrets to blending cultural heritage with modern tech. Whether you’re a CEO or a creator, you’ll learn how to stop being just ‘seen’ and finally start being heard.

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(00:00) – Sami’s Early Memories of Sound

As our conversation starts, Sami shares an early memory of sound that helped spark his musical career. “There’s a TV channel that, during Ramadan, would play this jingle,” he recalls. “It was called the NBC Ramadan jingle. And I’d say that’s my earliest memory… of music that not just moved me, but music that I could attach to a specific calendar day on the year.” He tells us about his studies at Berklee and how he made the jump to music licensing, and how his father’s advice helped convince him to focus on sonic branding in the Middle East. “He said, ‘You know what, this is a market that doesn’t really have that. If you stay in the UK or if you go back to the US, it’s a saturated market. You may not be really filling a gap there,’” Sami recalls his father telling him. “There’s a need for culturally relevant Middle Eastern music or Saudi or Kuwaiti music, but there was nowhere to really find that.”

(11:28) – The Secret to Creating Sonic Identities

Sami tells us more about culturally authentic sonic branding in the MENA region vs the West, and his perspective as someone who’s been on both sides. “Even Hollywood movies,” he says, “sometimes for us here in this region, when we watch a clip of a Hollywood movie and they’re in the Sahara Desert, the music is often off. We call it Orientalist or Aladdinesque.” We talk about his early career in sound and how hiring an orchestra helped