In the ever-changing world of sonic branding, few studios have made as much noise, quite literally, as WithFeeling. What started as a creative sound agency in Dubai has now grown into a global network spanning the UK, Las Vegas, and soon Riyadh. Known for crafting emotive audio identities that resonate across cultures, WithFeeling recently earned the People’s Choice Music & Sound Company of the Year at The Annual 2025, adding another accolade to an already impressive streak of wins.
But awards are just the echo of a much deeper philosophy. For WithFeeling, sound isn’t about volume, it’s about connection. The team blends artistry and data, intuition and innovation, to create soundscapes that move audiences around the world. From testing emotional reactions to sound, to amplifying underrepresented musical voices, they’re redefining what it means to create with empathy and purpose. In this #AnnualSpotlight, we dive into how WithFeeling continues to expand globally without losing the emotional heartbeat that started it all.
How does it feel to have earned the People’s Choice Music & Sound Company of the Year award?
Fantastic!
WithFeeling has been on a bit of a winning streak this past year, having taken home a number of accolades for some of our recent work, and we take a lot of pride in each and every win.
What made you decide to enter into The Annual?
Creativepool has been a wonderful resource for us as an agency, and we had a great time at last year's event. We look forward to entering again next year.
What role do you think awards play in motivating creativity and innovation within the industry?
Our industry is quite small, which means we’re on a first-name basis with a lot of the other competing teams.
A bit of competition is healthy, pushing everyone a little further to try to be just a little more creative with every project.
In just a few years, you’ve expanded across Dubai, UK, Las Vegas, and soon Riyadh. How are you localizing sound identity across these culturally distinct markets without losing your brand voice?
When you say it like that, it really does put into perspective just how busy we’ve been these last few years! We have an incredible global network of musicians, and we work very closely with each client to ensure we have a full understanding of the culture and musical expectations of each new regional audience.
WithFeelings “brand voice” is our ability to reflect authenticity and emotion into every project, and that's something we can do universally, no matter the region.
You introduced implicit reaction testing for audio (tracking emotional response). How has that influenced your creative decisions or client conversations?
We are fully behind the idea of initial gut reactions being the most crucial in creative decision-making. We know what we like and our job isn't to change people's taste.
This new way of testing and evaluating audio is very new, and we see a lot of potential for it in the near future.
In building sonic identity, how do you navigate the subjective nature of “what sounds right” versus measurable data or feedback?
This is the thing: music and sound are subjective.
My interpretation of how something should sound may not be yours or the next person's.
It's our job to find ways of communicating through music with our clients, to manage and align expectations so that a common understanding is created long before any bespoke asset is created.
Once everyone's on the same page, then we can bring the facts and figures in to ensure that we get something that performs just as well as it sounds without compromise.
How do you structure your internal collaboration (composers, sound designers, brand strategists) to ensure consistency, iteration and cross-pollination?
We’re a small company made up of musicians and music lovers alike.
We all have our place and our jobs to do, but when it comes to collaboration, opinions are heard, welcomed and encouraged from all members of staff, always!
Our morning brainstorming sessions have been the driving force behind some of our most creative and ambitious projects!
How do you integrate inclusive casting, diverse musical influences, or underrepresented voices into your sound to ensure contemporary relevance?
We’ve been fortunate enough to work on a variety of projects where the sole purpose is to bring underrepresented art or traditions to the foreground for a broader audience.
Not every project requires a contemporary approach, but when the opportunity arises, we run with it.
When clients resist more experimental or emotionally bold sound ideas, what is your persuasion strategy?
It's not our job to persuade a client for the sake of a unique or experimental approach to sound. Translating the client's overarching narrative into a musical experience is what we’re here to do. Sometimes, a bold strategy is what's called for a particular job and in most instances, the client is open to those concepts, because we wouldn't present them unless we felt it suited the overarching need for the brand or event.
In your growth, how do you preserve nimbleness, relationship depth, and craft, rather than becoming a transactional vendor?
Although we’ve seen some substantial growth in project size and our overall reach globally over these brief 4 years, our team, its values, and its ambition to create meaningful music that has a lasting emotional impact have stayed strongly grounded.
We keep good relationships with past clients and prefer projects from new clients who share a similar aspiration to do something more and to go that extra mile where creativity is concerned.
Which emergent audio/sonic frontier (spatial audio, adaptive sound, generative music) excites you most and how are you investing or experimenting there?
We have been so excited to see leaps and bounds being made across the audio technology space over the past 12 months.
We’ve gone out of our way to interview and discuss some of these innovations with the masterminds behind them all. The audio space hasn't stagnated in terms of innovation these past few years, but certainly slowed.
Emerging studies in the world of audio enclaves and the ability to bend sound around objects have us particularly interested, especially given our heavy background in immersive sound spaces.
In pro bono / “Sound for Good” projects you donate, what are the trade-offs (time, ROI, brand exposure) and how do you pick those opportunities?
There are very few trade-offs in doing pro-bono projects.
Obviously, this comes with exceptions, but we see value in doing work and lending our specific skillsets to organisations that may not be in a position to take advantage of them on a regular occasion.
Our work with Team GB for the Special Olympics for instance, gives us an opportunity to support a team that's doing some amazing work and gets very little recognition for it.
We take a lot of pride in this, and getting to be a part of something far bigger than ourselves just for the sake of it has been a tremendous uplift for the entire WithFeeling team.
Do you have any particularly exciting projects in the pipeline that might be contenders for the awards in 2026?
We had a very successful award season in 2025, but 2026 is going to be on another level altogether. Just wait and see.
What advice would you give to agencies looking to take home their own accolade next year?
A good-sounding or good-looking project is pointless unless it solves a problem. Don't just create for the sake of being creative; do something more with it.
What’s the most challenging project you’ve done (e.g. brand vs cultural resonance, small brief, technical constraint) and how did you solve it?
That would have to be our work for YourBazaar.
The brief was to create a sonic identity that felt instantly familiar yet culturally neutral for a platform serving over a hundred nationalities in the UAE; no small feat. We solved it by reimagining the “Happy Birthday” melody to match yourbazaar.ae, turning a universal tune into a memorable call-to-action. It struck the right emotional chord, resonated across cultures, and ultimately earned us Gold at the Transform Awards MEA 2025.