Jakob Utgård

Must the ice-cream van become silent?

Jakob Utgård © 2024.

This case was prepared as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. The case is inspired by real events, but the names and company is fictional

Background

The ice-cream van is common in Norway and is a van that drives around in urban residential areas selling ice-cream. The van typically operates in most of the year and visits each neighbourhood every week or two weeks, at approximately the same time. To attract customers, the vans play a loud tune or siren, telling the neighbours that the van has arrived. The vans carry a good selection of ice-cream with a focus on multipacks and with similar or higher prices than in supermarkets. Several companies operate ice-cream vans, and in Oslo the same neighbourhood can be visited by several different vans.

Jonas, local resident and father of two

The first time I reacted to the loud sound of the ice-cream truck’s siren I was taking my daughter for a walk. She had just fallen asleep in her trolley when the ice-cream truck suddenly came around the corner and started playing its loud music. She woke up and started crying.

We live in a quiet neighborhood in Oslo. When the ice-cream truck comes, we can hear the music maybe for two hours, while the truck circulates in our area. It is really quite disturbing, especially when we are sitting outside or when the truck arrives in the nap-time for our kids. What about people working in the night-time that has to sleep during the day? This must be a problem for them.

I cannot believe that it is allowed to use loud noise to advertise your products in residential areas. What if other types of companies do the same? Instead of noise, they should use an app alerting customers who are interested that the van is approaching, then nobody would be disturbed.

In the local elections this year my vote goes to the party that wants to stop this.

Anne Jordal, marketing director of Ice-cream trucks AS

We have been operating ice-cream vans for more than 25 years. The tune that we use is from a classical piece by Grieg, and we know that for some people the tune brings joy and recognition, while we realise that some people are disturbed by the sound.

We get more complaints from people who miss our van, than from people who are annoyed by the sound. If people contact us we can reduce the volume in their local area.

We have a service where customers can be notified by SMS when we are in the area, and we are working on our new mobile app.

We are also working on expanding the product assortment in the vans. From this year we offer frozen pizza, meals, and desserts.

Marit Jørgensen, head of the local council administration

After receiving a complaint from a local resident we looked into the situation. There is no general ban on using sound for advertising purposes. However, the local council can decide such a ban. For us it is not clear how big the problem is, but we have seen in a local newspaper that a couple of the political parties in the council are in favor of such a ban. We know that some of our neighboring councils have a ban, but I think the ice-cream truck still continues going there. I guess the police does not prioritize such matters.

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