Study: Consumers Associate High-Pitched Ads With Healthier Food

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We’re all aware of the marketing tricks or methods that advertisers use to get us to purchase the advertised product. Here’s a new one: consumers associate commercials that contain higher-pitched sounds with healthier food products.

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A new study performed by researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore investigated the link between the pitch or frequency of sonic logos and the consumer perception of the healthiness or quality of depicted foods.

A sonic logo is a name given to a short melody or jingle that supports a particular brand – for example, the McDonald’s jingle or the more recent Wayfair furniture tune. The goal of a sonic logo is to get consumers to recognize the brand simply by hearing the song – which hopefully leads to purchasing the product.

The study also investigated the link between visual representations and perceptions of food quality and found that consumers made connections from stimulating visuals to a healthier perception of food.

Research began with students presenting 180 participants with either sonic logos or visual cues. They then viewed a pair of food images—one healthy and one unhealthy—and were asked to choose which food they thought the sonic logo or visual cue best represented.

The healthy food options depicted included green salad, fruit salad, and tomato and cucumber salad. The unhealthy images were of a cheeseburger, french fries, and chocolate chip cookies.