Monday, April 16, 2007

Bacon Marketing: sell the sizzle not the steak

What's true for cows is true for pigs.
A recent study by British scientists at Leeds University spent over 1000 hours exploring an extensive variety of permutations across the different elements that make up the humble bacon buttie (sandwich). The results found that texture and sound are just if not more important than taste and smell.

It suggests a corollary of the time-honored maxim for marketing beef: selling the 'sizzle' is more evocative and effective that the steak.

The research - sponsored by the Danish Bacon and Food Institute - has cracked the code on how to prepare the perfect bacon buttie:

Ideally, 0.4 newtons should be applied to crunch the sandwich, creating 0.5 decibels of noise. The formula uses these values: N = force in newtons; fb is the function of the bacon type; fc is the function of the condiment or filling effect; Ts is the serving temperature; tc is cooking time; ta is the time taken to insert the condiment or filling; cm is the cooking method and C represents the breaking strain in newtons of uncooked bacon.

For bacon lovers everywhere, the holy grail is:

N = C + {fb(cm) x fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc x ta

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