Michaël Boumendil

In 2017, Boumendil set off to the United States to create a New York office in order to develop the agency’s presence in North America. He has now become not only an expert in sonic identity and sound design, but he is now a vocal identity specialist. Today, he continues to globally expand Sixième Son most notably in Australia, Canada, Spain, and Russia.

In June 2017, Boumendil published a book devoted to sonic branding: Musical Design and Brand Strategy (published by Eyrolles). He has also contributed to Colleen Fahey’s book, Audio Branding: Using Sound to Build Your Brand (KoganPage 2017), as well as Laurence Minsky and Ilan Geva’s Global Brand Management (KoganPage 2019).

In late 2016, Boumendil sued Gilmour, claiming that Gilmour had violated the terms of the agreement by using a recording of the jingle from SNCF stations and not re-recording it. The French Court decided in early 2019 that Boumendil's proceeding came too long after the alleged breach and ordered Boumendil to pay Gilmour's court costs. Boumendil appealed the decision.

Boumendil's SNCF jingle has inspired the title track of former Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's 2015 album, Rattle That Lock (2015). It was co-written by Gilmour and Boumendil, with lyrics by Gilmour's wife Polly Samson. Gilmour, in many interviews, has talked about the rare quality of Boumendil's work.

After graduating high school at 17, Boumendil continued on to preparatory school in Business and economics and shortly after enrolled in EDHEC. There studied marketing and communication and graduated in 1994. He then decided to build a business around his two passions, music and design, bringing music into the field of design and brand strategy. Only one year after graduating, he founded the first musical design - or more often called sonic branding - agency Sixième Son in 1995.  The idea was essentially to translate the visual groundwork of a brand into a sonic complement for the brand.

Michaël Boumendil (born 25 April 1971) is a French composer and producer. In the early 1990s, he conceived the idea to create sonic identities for brands. In 1995, he founded Sixième Son, an agency dedicated to sonic branding and is responsible for the audio identities and music design for brands such as Unilever, Huggies, Lada Autos, Samsung, Cartier, Dior, Lancôme, Baccarat, Carrefour, Enel, Vueling, Michelin, Renault, AXA and others. He is one of the pioneers of sonic identity.