Listen to your next Volkswagen

In Australia, Volkswagen has launched a website that is all about sound design. In the Volkswagen R Range website there is nothing more than cool, deep, intense sounds. Cars don’t move. You just hear the sound of their doors, their brakes and their engines while they move through a static yet rich, imagined, journey.

This is certainly a website that only a limited number of people will appreciate. I don’t want to sound odious by saying this however, for example, you’ll agree that only if you have a pair of headphones you will fully enjoy and appreciate the experience. Also, it requires a bit of patience (for the site to load) and quite some curiosity to understand the site is not just about three photos and a series of short factsheets. Last but not least, without a touch of imagination, you won’t hear sounds and experience the journey, but simply perceive no-sense even annoying noise.

This said, let me add that I love this piece of work. It’s a great and rare example of sound marketing, which reminds me of a very good book by Martin Lindstrom published a few years ago, but still extremely actual and relevant. It’s called Brand Sense: How to Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound and I strongly recommend you reading it, to learn how to build online (and offline) experiences that exploit all the five senses. (Yeah, ok, to play with the olfaction on the Web still might result a bit hard