People love saying the internet is visual. Sure. So is a fire alarm if you stare at it long enough.
The thing everyone forgets is sound.
For the Cybersole product videos, the visuals had to be sharp. That part was obvious. The product was technical, the audience was obsessive in the best and most dangerous way, and the presentation needed to feel premium without turning into a fireworks show made by someone who just discovered particles.
But the sound was what made the whole thing land.
A promotional video without intentional sound design is just a very confident slideshow. It can look expensive and still feel dead on arrival. Music gives the piece a pulse. Effects give the motion weight. Tiny audio details tell your brain, "Yes, this thing exists in a world, and yes, someone with taste was paying attention."
Small but important detail: the soundtracks were licensed. Not "grab something from the internet and hope the lawyers are busy" licensed. Properly licensed. Boring on paper, essential in practice, and exactly the kind of invisible decision that lets the work feel polished without carrying a tiny legal thundercloud above it.
At one point while working for Cybersole, I was also working with a sound engineer and doing explorations around sonic branding. What should Cybersole sound like if it had a startup tone? A reveal? A little mechanical click that makes the interface feel less like software and more like a machine you actually want to use? Ridiculous questions, until they are suddenly the questions that make the whole brand feel more real.
That was one of the perks of being a creative director there: the freedom to take these side quests around the mission. Not random detours. More like reconnaissance. You go off into some strange corner, poke around, bring back a useful artifact, and now the main thing has more texture than it did before.
That was the approach: make the visuals and the soundtrack feel like one system. The pacing, the transitions, the product moments, the reveals - all of it had to move with the audio instead of politely sitting next to it.
The collaboration with Imagecrate worked because it treated the video like a complete experience. Not "here is a product, please clap." More like: here is the feeling, here is the speed, here is the texture, here is why this release matters before anyone has to explain it in a caption.
Sound also carries emotion faster than almost anything else. A kick, a riser, a click, a little mechanical snap at the right moment - suddenly the interface feels more physical. The brand feels more deliberate. The viewer gets pulled in before they can start doing that deeply cursed thing where they watch a video while also scrolling something else.
The lesson is simple, which is annoying because simple lessons usually take forever to learn: if you want people to remember the thing, do not just make it look good. Make it feel timed, intentional, and alive.
Watch the promotional videos: