"Beneful, please!"
The marketing geniuses at Nestle will air an ad targeted directly at dogs this week in Austria, featuring a high-pitched tone designed to appeal to canines, Reuters
reports. The ad features
the squeaking sounds of common dog toys as well as a high-frequency tone that is "barely audible to humans," according to the news release
. Noticeably absent from the release is the fact that all TV speakers are designed by humans for humans, with maximum frequencies reaching 20,000 hertz, the upper limit of human hearing
. But most speakers top out well below this. While dogs can hear sounds up to at least 40 kHz
, it's almost impossible human speakers could broadcast any special tone that would be able to alert your dog any more than, say, a six-year-old. But, giving "credit" where it's due, the ad is clever, in a cynical-marketing-ploy way. “The television commercial aims to reach both the pet and the owner, supporting the special one-to-one relationship between them,” said Xavier Pérez, brand manager of Beneful for Nestlé Purina PetCare Europe. That special one-to-one relationship where Spot wags twice when he wants Beneful. http://youtu.be/UTF3Gc22va4
Image courtesy of Nestle
