The event
On 14 October 2026, LBB published a new Heard Mentality piece with Commercial Radio & Audio, built around an episode featuring Dom Hickey, chief strategy officer at Enigma, and Jon Austin, founder of Supermassive. The theme is familiar to anyone who works in production, but still urgent: audio is too often treated as a late executional layer rather than an early creative decision.
The available sources at the time of writing are LBB's article, related LBB work pages for the audio extracts and Commercial Radio & Audio's official Heard Mentality page. We are not implying that we reviewed material beyond those accessible pages and clips. The published article, however, contains enough detail to draw a useful production lesson for agencies, brands and producers.
The argument is not simply « spend more on sound ». It is sharper than that. If sound is expected to create emotion, memory, rhythm or brand recognition, it has to be present when the idea is being shaped, not only when the edit is nearly finished.
Why the article matters
According to LBB, Hickey argues that audio can deliver cut-through when teams think beyond older channel habits. She also challenges the tendency to give less attention to formats that feel disposable.
Austin's contribution, as reported by LBB, is especially relevant for craft. He compares the care given to grade, edit and typography with the relative haste often applied to voiceover, music and audio detail. That comparison will feel uncomfortable to many production teams because it is recognisable.
A film may spend days refining a transition, but leave the voice session under-directed. A brand may debate a type size for a week, then approve a track because it is broadly inoffensive. A director may have a precise visual grammar, while the sound world is described only as modern, premium or energetic.
For a music and sound agency, the point is practical. Late audio has to compensate. It has to rescue pacing, create emotion where the edit has left no space, and make a brand memorable without having been given the structural room to do so.
A concrete example: voice before music
Imagine a fifteen-second online film for a financial product. It has a fast edit, a mandatory line, a brand promise and a logo end card. The agency wants trust, momentum and warmth without sounding sentimental.
If audio enters at the end, the conversation becomes narrow. Which track can sit under the VO? Should it be a soft piano, a light pulse, a minimal bed? How loud can it be before the legal line suffers? The mixer is now negotiating space that the script and edit have already spent.
If audio enters at the brief, the decisions improve. The copy can be written for the mouth as well as the page. The VO casting can carry trust without forcing the score to do all the emotional work. The music can leave room in the middle frequencies. A small sonic gesture can mark the brand promise. A half-second of silence can make the end card feel deliberate.
That is why Sul Tasto often treats silence, voice, music and sound design as a single system. Related production thinking appears in Silence in advertising and Music and sound design in post-production.
What this means for original music
The Heard Mentality discussion is about audio broadly, but it has a direct consequence for original composition.
A track written to impress in a presentation is not always the same as a cue built to survive a campaign. The presentation track may be dense, flattering and emotionally obvious. The campaign cue may need to be clearer, more modular and more disciplined.
That difference matters when the same idea has to work as a thirty-second film, a fifteen, a six, a radio edit, a social cut, a case study and perhaps a market adaptation. Music that has no internal hierarchy becomes difficult to cut. Music that contains a clear motif, pulse, texture or cadence can be reduced without losing its identity.
This is where early commissioning changes the result. The composer can write with the versioning architecture in mind. The sound designer can avoid duplicating the rhythm of the music. The mixer can receive stems that have a real purpose rather than a pile of emergency options.
For more on that workflow, see Sul Tasto's guides to stems, cutdowns and versioning and original music for advertising.
The serious limitation
There is a risk in overstating the lesson. Bringing audio in earlier does not automatically fix weak strategy, vague copy or a film with no point of view. Sound can intensify an idea, clarify a rhythm and create memory. It cannot replace the idea.
There is also a budget objection. Not every campaign can support a full sonic strategy process, extensive testing, bespoke composition, live recording, sound design and many rounds of versioning. Pretending otherwise is not helpful to producers.
The better lesson is proportionality. Decide where sound creates value and invest there. That may mean a better-directed voice session rather than a bigger music budget. It may mean one distinctive sonic device instead of a full identity system. It may mean removing music from a section so the product, performance or line can breathe.
Good audio craft is not the same as maximum audio. It is the disciplined use of sound where it changes the audience's experience.
What agencies can change now
The useful takeaway from the 14 October publication is simple enough to apply on the next brief.
Add three audio questions before the first edit: what must the audience hear, what must the sound never cover, and what has to survive the cutdowns?
Share the media plan with the music and sound team, even if it is provisional. A one-off online film is not briefed the same way as an integrated campaign with radio, paid social, connected TV and international adaptation.
Finally, invite music and sound design into the conversation before picture lock when possible. Not to add complexity, but to prevent audio from becoming repair work.
Heard Mentality's latest piece is a useful reminder because it is not abstract. It points to a production habit that can be changed immediately: stop asking sound to arrive last and behave as if it had been there from the start.