Picture this: How audio stimulates the imagination to evoke appetite appeal

Three lessons for effective audio creative for food and drink brands.

Imagine this. You’re late for work, skip breakfast, and head out the door. As you settle into your commute and turn on the car radio, you hear this…

Tempted…? Me too!

This simple example shows how audio can stimulate appetite without ever visually showing food.

McDonald’s success is partly due to strategic timing, placing the ad during breakfast hours when listeners are most receptive. Research has shown how timeliness and relevance increases engagement and memorability. But timing alone doesn’t guarantee appetite appeal. So what creative techniques can help stimulate tastebuds by way of eardrums any time of the day?

Using data from Radiogauge, which has measured 28 food and drink campaigns over the past decade, we’ve identified the creative characteristics that drive strong response to taste-related metrics, e.g. “tastes great”. While 80% of these campaigns saw a substantial uplift to the relevant taste metric, the best-performing campaigns performed two to three times higher than the average. Below are three key lessons from these top performers.

1. Use vivid descriptions of eating experiences

Vibrant language can help evoke the pleasure of eating the food described – and create anticipation for future consumption.

As evidenced by the delicious Hash Browns ad from McDonald’s, while you can’t show the product with audio, you can use theatre of the mind to get mouths watering.

Unconvinced? Have a listen to this Colman’s ad and see what your mind conjures up:

Salivating yet?

How about Diet Tango? Despite promoting a diet product, this ad features the most delectable and compelling evocation of the joy of eating fish and chips – if it doesn’t make you want to buy some right now, you must be dead (or a non-fish eater)!

I think I’ll eat mine accompanied by some fava beans and a nice Chianti… ?

2. Use sounds irresistibly associated with pleasurable food encounters

Lexical-gustatory Synesthesia is the name for when certain sounds trigger tastes or smells. Marketers may be able to harness these effects using sounds strongly associated with the food they’re advertising.

Have a listen to thissss Danish Bacon ad…

It cleverly uses the product’s name to emulate the unmistakable sizzle of bacon, instantly conjuring up dreamy images (and perhaps even the delightful aroma) of bacon sizzling in the pan.

Using these sounds consistently builds an association with your brand, enhancing longer-term campaign effectiveness in addition to instant appetite appeal. Here’s an example of an ad that exploits this dual effect brilliantly to deliver sensory experience and brand in one hit…

Having been a regular radio advertiser since 2022, Magnum’s signature chocolate crack has become the brand sonic. It appears consistently across creatives along with their ‘True to pleasure’ strapline, emphasizing the brand’s focus on indulgence.

3. Stimulate listener behaviour by evoking positive emotions

It may sound obvious, but alongside evoking appetite appeal, radio ads for food brands should also aim to generate positive emotions in listeners. Beyond effectively tickling their taste buds, the ads featured above all leave listeners feeling positive. In this context, let’s take a listen to one last ad that really delivers on all fronts.

Using Dawn French’s warm voice to narrate their radio ads, M&S really awaken the taste buds in a way that also makes the listener feel good – and therefore more likely to act.

To underpin this point, Radiocentre’s Listen Up! research found that radio ads that evoke more positive emotions in listeners drive an 8.2% uplift in consumer action, including purchasing and using the featured brands/products.

What’s the takeaway?

By using vivid and descriptive language combined with harnessing the power of synesthesia – exploiting sounds strongly associated with/evocative of specific food – audio advertisers can really make the listener’s mouth water. Furthermore, employing these approaches in a way that evokes positive emotions can boost listener response to food/drink advertising.

When served together like this, the evidence feels overwhelming for placing audio advertising on the menu for more food and drink brands.

That’s all I’ve got time for right now – I’ve developed a sudden urgent need to go and eat some food…

Want More Information?

Radiogauge is a free post-campaign ad effectiveness measure offered by Radiocentre. For more information, please see here or contact jasmine.horsham@radiocentre.org

If you’re interested in investigating further how to reach people at the right time, our Context Targeter tool allows you to find out which media reach people across the day when engaged in activities related to your campaign, including driving to the supermarket.