Welcome to the Sound In Marketing podcast. The Sound In Marketing Podcast explores and defines sound on purpose, in marketing and in advertising. I'm your host, Jeanna Isham, owner and founder of Dreamr Productions and Sound in Marketing Learning. I create, consult and educate individuals and brands on the power of sound in marketing. My goal is to inspire you with unique and interesting ways to use sound effectively in your business.
If you would like to explore this further, my company, Dreamr Productions, would love to help out. Contact info can be found in the show notes. Now on to the show. In this episode, the focus is on a bag design blunder. At one point, Sun Chips bags were too loud but for a good cause. Eco friendly intentions are good. But if the customer isn't happy, then it's back to the drawing board. Sun Chips set out to save the planet, but ignored an important part of the customer experience.
The result was deafening. As a strategist and thought leader in the sound marketing space. This case study has always grabbed my attention. It's an unusual cautionary tale, wrapped up with a good sense of humor. I share this example with clients as proof that strategic sound truly does matter. Even in something seemingly innocent, like the crinkle of a bag. The last thing you want is to lose revenue and customers over a distracting sound, right? Case in point, SunChips.
lost a lot of money over a silly bag design flaw. In 2010. SunChips created a bag that was 100% compostable. They said the bag would biodegrade within two weeks in a landfill, which is amazing. However, it was loud. Too loud, apparently touching, opening and basically manipulating the bag in any way was recorded as having 95dB of sound. to the regular bags 60 to 70dB. Put that in perspective. A pilot had said the bag was noisier than his cockpit.
Customers started weighing in on social media and it wasn't sounding good. The now discontinued Facebook page sorry, but I can't hear you over this SunChips bag got more than 49,000 likes at the height of the story. The Google search phrase Sun Chips bag too Loud had 149,000 results. PepsiCo even poked fun at themselves when launching in Canada. They released ads saying if the bag is too loud for you, we'd be happy to send you earplugs.
A similar sentiment was shared on this Reddit strand, and I quote. “Lawnmowers and orchestras are things we expect to be loud. “‘This is why it is recommended to wear earmuffs while mowing, and concert “halls are arranged to spread out the sound so the audience “is not directly blasted by the sound waves. “Just as I would not start a lawnmower or hit a timpani in my home or office, “I do not want to have to put on protective ear covering “or walk into an open theater for my afternoon snack.”
Ultimately, SunChips scrapped the bag. Pun intended, and created a less noisy but still biodegradable bag for a 2011 launch. Saving the planet with eco friendly materials created a user experience problem. Noise pollution. Sound is our compass in life. It helps us perceive the world. It connects us with the subject of the sound. This connection then determines how we feel about it and how we should respond. In the case of food, the sound it makes interprets what it should taste like.
When the sound doesn't match expectations, it feels wrong and our brain labels it as bad. Too much sound can also hurt us. According to the American Speech Language Hearing Association. Excessive noise not only causes hearing loss, but it can also affect our health. These health effects range from elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, and an upset tummy, just to name a few. It can also result in just feeling flat out cranky about the whole situation.
However, since the dawn of the chip, people have perceived its freshness by its crunch. If someone reaches into a bag of chips and bites down on a soggy or silent chip, they consider it stale or no good. So if opening a bag of chips is part of that crunchy experience, why wouldn't a loud bang transmit freshness? Because it's a balancing act. Like everything else in this world, there can be too much of a good thing. In the case of the SunChip bag, the sound overstimulated.
The user senses and ruined their experience, It overpowered everything and confused the brain's interpretation of what was correct. With this idea in mind, think about advertising in general. The average 30 minute show has about eight minutes of commercials in a 30 minute podcast. There could be around 3 to 4 minutes of ads. These ads are already an interruption to the user's regularly scheduled programing.
Every brand that advertises needs to recognize that its messaging will initially be received as a noise nuisance. It's up to them to find a way to advertise unobtrusively. If the brand wants to get the user's attention, it needs to be alluring, engaging, convincing and memorable. This is done with things like humor or intrigue. By pulling at the heart strings or making the user cringe by using descriptive adjectives to connect to the senses.
By using descriptive adjectives, an ad cuts through the noise and gives the user a reason to pay attention. Touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell are all core senses that we use to create personality and preference. Brands can use these core senses to do the same. However, too much of anything can be overwhelming. Using a well-balanced diet of harmonious sensory marketing makes the brand more human. It gives the user a reason to feel the way the brand intends for them to feel. When done right.
Sound in marketing is a brand's best friend. When done wrong, it becomes a brand's worst nightmare. Perhaps the factory was too loud and drowned out the sound of the bag during production. Or maybe they skipped the test groups because they'd hit such a grand slam with their own expectations. Whatever the case may have been, one thing was clear the SunChips bag design wasn't harmonious with the experience. All was not lost for SunChips.
Through the bag debacle, they received a lot of organic publicity. This publicity was managed with a good sense of humor and their willingness to poke fun at themselves a little bit. I'll press as good press as they say. We're all only human. We all make mistakes at one point or another. Sun chips and PepsiCo got a lesson in user experience that they won't be forgetting anytime soon. The blunder also provided the bag a taste of humanity by reaching a very human outcome; imperfection.
Sun chips plan to create a fully biodegradable bag was a great idea. However, they missed the mark and forgot about the customer's experience. The result was a dip in revenue of 11%. The mistake that SunChips made was to not experience their product alongside their consumer. If they had taken the time to actually handle the bag during beta testing, they would have come to the same conclusion as everyone else.
They discovered the problem could be fixed by using a different adhesive to hold together the different bag layers. This softened the sound and reinvigorated the sales. They still saved the planet. It just took a little longer. Experience is everything. And although a loud bag seems silly, it matters. Sound in marketing and branding matters. It absolutely must be made on purpose every single time. A special thanks to Artlist who provided my background music throughout this episode.
Thank you also to all of the companies that have inspired me to think that this world of marketing is most definitely becoming more human centric. Did this episode get you inspired to start exploring your brand sound? Dreamr productions would love to help. We produce branded podcasts, Sonic logos, and strategize branded sound plans. Contact information can be found in the show notes. Let's make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand.