Sound Design

When Steffen Weise, director of research and development at Germany's biggest cookie maker Bahlsen, sees one of his firm's products on a plate, he's not just thinking about the sweet, buttery taste or the slight hint of orange put into one of the baker's latest creations. He's thinking about mastication.

"Imagine you see a cookie on a plate and it looks very crunchy," he said, frowning slightly. "But when you bite into it you find something very soft and unpleasant."

That, he said, is not what Bahlsen or most baked-goods buyers want their cookie experience to be.

The Hanover-based company, founded in 1891, has been well known for its Leibnitz butter cookies for decades and marketed the product's powerful crunch in advertisements back in the 1960s. But more recently, it decided that it wanted to add another dimension to its research and development efforts for new products. While taste and texture had been the primary considerations, Bahlsen, in an attempt to get ahead of competitors, added the auditory element. It was one of the first food companies to take this new sensory step.

Bahlsen began testing focus groups on their reactions to the sounds of different cookie recipes. The company developed elaborate recording systems, microphones that were placed inside testers' ears to record as accurately as possible the sound the chewer hears while chomping down on a cookie.

Complicated computer programs were developed that presented individuals with a specific crunch and then asked them to rate it according to emotions it triggered or what kind of image it brought to mind. Then the cookie recipe in development could be tweaked – more butter added to soften the crunch, more sugar to make it harder – until the right crunch at the right duration for the right crowd was found.

Age makes a difference

Bahlsen found that younger people wanted a stronger crunch, something crisp, loud and exciting. For them, that represented youth, risk taking and dynamism.

For the older crowd, however, a softer, more delicate auditory experience was usually preferred. They tended to want their sweets to evoke luxury and richness, so the butter content was increased to provide a sonically calmer event.

"Older people in general are not very interested in additional noisy or stressful situations," Weise said. "They want to relax; they want to enjoy their food. And they don't need any action while eating."

Subtle messaging

For Bahlsen and other companies working with sound, it revolves around what they call "implicit coding." That is, they want a message to get into the consumer's head without him or her realizing it. That message should be positive and basically say, "buy me, and not the other one" when faced with 20 varieties of cookies or 30 brands of beer on the store shelves.

"If you have the specific sound you know when you open this bottle you will already be happy before tasting the product itself," said Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp, who teaches psychoacoustics at Berlin's Technical University. "It's not really a conscious process. You are influenced without knowing it."

While sound design in the food industry is relatively new, other sectors have been using sound engineers in their development teams for some time now. It runs the gamut from feminine hygiene spray (which should sound soft and soothing when spraying) to mosquito repellent (which should have a little more power behind it, to keep those little monsters at bay) to electric razors.

These days, sound designers are often seen as good cooks, adjusting their sonic recipes so that consumers using a product experience positive emotions, aren't too surprised and feel their needs and desires are being met.

Cars and corporations

The most intensively sound designed product is likely the automobile. The slam of a car door should sound like a safe closing, and any rattling be kept at a minimum. A Volvo driver will likely want the car's engine to purr quietly and dependably. The Porsche buyer wants a different sound, one that communicates raw, naked power.

Corporations are also hiring sound designers to provide jingles and corporate music which tell the public who they are, or would at least like to be perceived as being.

An insurance company like Allianz wants music that communicates reliability and trust. The Audi car brand needs something that indicates motion and speed, but not recklessness.

"We want to interpret the brand in the acoustic way so that people who hear it say: 'Oh, that is for me: premium, or that is for me: trust'," said Carl-Frank Westermann, who heads up the sound department at the Berlin company MetaDesign and has created jingles for both companies.

While everything can be sound designed to a certain extent, some sonic engineering has – perhaps counter-intuitively -- fallen on its face. In the past, engineers have created quieter vacuum cleaners that were auditory miles away from the high-decibel whines of most of the today's makes.

But, companies found the quieter vacuums did not sell as well. In many people's minds, all that headache-inducing noise equaled superior suction power. The vacuums soon got their screams back.