Sensory Branding

Our senses play major role in our experience, choices of brands / products. Much of our
understanding of our environment is informed by our senses. In turn, our experiences
inform our senses, the senses being linked to memory. We store our values, feelings and
emotions in memory banks.As the cost of reaching consumers rises in the traditional media,
competition for securing their attention increases likewise!

What is the necessity for Sensory branding now?

- With the launch of new stores / expansion of existing store in almost all categories the
market is cluttered with many players more than the consumers can afford!

- A brand can’t make the customers stick to it, just by positioning on quality of the product,
since almost all companies nowadays do not compromise on quality

- There has to be something, which even the customer might not aware of, should make
them loyal to our brand

- That something can’t be made via press ads, TVCs, Hoardings etc.. That has to be done
when the consumer is around or having physical connection with the brand!

Let’s take a look at each of the five senses now, and how some brands have used them to
create their own individual space in a world full of quality products.

Sound
Sound is connected to mood and in fact generates mood, creating feelings and
emotions.Music helps to create an ambience and should be chosen based on brand essence.
Embedding sound in a brand helps creating new marketing avenues where sight is not
effective or applicable.

Examples:

Kellogg’s:

Kellogg’s has spent years experimenting with the synergy between crunch and taste.
Kellogg’s had patent their products’ crunchiness, to trademark and own it in the same way
they own their recipes and logo and designed a unique crunch for Kellogg’s. The day
Kellogg’s introduced their unique crunch to the market, the brand moved up the ladder.

Intel:

Developed in 1998, it stands out as the clearest, most distinct, consistent and memorable
use of sound. It has helped Intel create a brand for a product which is invisible (chip) from
the customer.Research shows that the jingle is more popular than Intel’s logo.
Telecom Sector:

Airtel: The ‘Airtel tune’.

Nokia: Trademarked by Nokia, ‘The Nokia Tune’ was the first identifiable ringtone on a cell
phone.

Automotive Sector:

Daimler Chrysler: Sound of opening & closing of car doors.

Harley Davidson: The sound of theirV-Twin engine exhaust.

Sight
Sight is the most powerful of the five senses. It can overrule our other senses and persuade
us against all logic.

Sight helps us perceive differences and contrasts between, for example, big and small, dark
and light, or thick or thin. The sight sense makes it easier for a person to notice the changes
and differences that characterize a new design, a different package, or a new store interior.

Design, aesthetics, lighting, and beauty are crucial to creating our fellow-feeling with brand

It is common to talk about the “genetic code” of brands to describe how it is possible for
them to differentiate themselves from their competitors through sight experiences. The
visual whole, or the genetic code, can be expressed by the product, the service landscape
such as malls and shops, and websites.

Examples

Lamborghini Automobiles

Being famous for its sleek and sporty looks its rules the fast and furious segment of
automobile sector.

PFIZER

Pfizer Viagra is one of the jewels in the pharmaceutical industry. It’s an excellent example of
how shape and color can be used effectively and can be used as a trademark in consumer
mind.

Calcium Sandoz

The shape of the bottle was changed to attract kids

Nike

The design of the product is what matter while making a purchase decision.
Google London’s New Office Is a Happy Kiddie Funhouse

If you’re the largest search engine in the world, with revenue in the billions, stock options
pouring out the ears, and execs lighting cigars on $100 bills, how do you design your office? 

Like a Kindergarten ……..!!!!

The design is made taking into consideration the employee attraction towards the primary
color and it’s assume that people tend to show a higher efficiency if given their choice of
environment.

Smell
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we
have lived. Humans only need 1/1000 of a second to register an aroma - scents must be mild
e.g. in stores. After sight smell is the most important sense, it attracts people into buying
stuff.

We don’t smell with our nose, but with our brain. People stay 40% longer in fragranced
spaces

You can close your eyes, cover your ears, refrain from touch, and reject taste, but smell is
part of the air we breathe. Smell is also extraordinarily powerful in evoking memory.

Scent can be used in a wide range of applications, including to:

 Enhance mood
 Trigger memory
 Enhanced recall
 Decrease anxiety
 Establish brand imprint
 Increase brand loyalty

Popular examples of brands incorporating scent in their products

1. Starbucks Coffee
2. Rolls Royce
3. Thomas Pink
4. Crayola Crayons
5. Singapore Airlines
Taste
Tastes are mainly perceived through the taste buds on the tongue. Adults have about
10,000 taste buds that register and send information to the brain.

Stimulating the individual´s taste sense appears to be increasingly important for a firm to
create a holistic view of a brand in which the taste sense as well as the other senses plays a
role in the sensory experience

Smell and taste are known as the chemical senses since both are able to sample the
environment. They are closely interlinked. Many studies indicate that we often eat with our
nose-if food passes the smell test. It will most likely pass the taste test.

Print is a great way to reach existing and potential consumers. However, with practically
infinite number of advertising messages fighting for consumer attention, the fragmentation
of traditional media advertising has had a negative impact on its effectiveness.

Examples

 Colgate is one of the exceptions. They've patented their distinct toothpaste taste. It's
important to note that they have not to date extended this distinctive taste to their
other products, like their toothbrushes or dental flosses. So although they've been
totally consistent with establishing the Colgate "look" across their product lines,
they've been inconsistent by not building their unique taste into products other than
toothpaste. Despite this lack of consistency, Colgate probably ranks as one of the
best brands in applying a distinct taste to its product, although there still remains a
fair bit of room to leverage taste as part of the brand's extension strategy.

 Welch's® catered its 100% Grape Juice to young children and their mothers for its
first 140 years, Welch's® brand to the exploding health conscious market. Shifting its
campaign to target Generation X moms and promote the nutritional benefits of
Welch's® 100% Grape Juice - namely its high antioxidant content, which is twice that
of orange juice - Welch's® was looking for an innovative way to market its new image

Solution
In the February 18, 2008 edition of PEOPLE magazine, Welch's® placed a 2-page insert with a
grape juice flavored Peel ‘n Taste® taste strip affixed to the front of the advertisement.
Readers were urged to "Remove and Lick" the taste strip and learn about the health
benefits of Welch's® 100% Grape Juice.

Results 
The advertisement proved to have break-through power and top-of-mind brand awareness;
it had the highest brand recall of all ads in the issue.

With over 1.5 million PEOPLE magazine subscribers tasting Welch's® Peel ‘n Taste® flavor
strips, 59% were more likely to purchase Welch's® 100% Grape Juice.  On top of that, 62% of
consumers reported that the ad prompted them to take some form of action, from
spreading the word to actually heading out to their local supermarket and buying the
product.

Touch/Feel
Texture, Shapes, Temperature, and other senses of touch offer powerful possibilities to
create a bond with your consumers. Like taste, the use of the tactile sense is to companies
which sell physical products

Tactile marketing is based on the fact that brands and products are physically accessible for
customers to touch. This enables an interaction between a firm and the individual, and it
can also make customers interact with brands and products they normally would not pay
attention to.

Interaction with a brand and product can emerge through the touch sense, which begins
with the skin. The reactions formed when we touch something are not only physical but also
psychological. Touching something thereby gives a deeper meaning, and touching itself,
which tells us whether something is hard or soft, smooth or abrasive, can make us relive
memories and feelings.

Examples:

Apple, BMW, Absolut Vodka and IKEA are examples of how tactile expressions such
material, surface, forms and weight can create a touch experience.

Consider the classic, contoured Coca-Cola bottle. The bottle was designed approximately 90
years ago to satisfy the request of an American bottler for a soft-drink container that could
be identified by touch even in the dark. The Coke bottle was not encumbered with a lot of
text, and the color scheme was universal. The tactile encounter with the bottle conveyed a
sense of pleasure across multiple cultures.

Containers for cosmetics—and in particular for fragrances—tend to make conscious tactile

appeals to the consumer. Modern perfume bottles come in all shapes and sizes but, like the
containers of antiquity, most are made of glass. Handling an elegant sculpted glass
container provides the consumer with a sense of luxury that does not come across in the
same way with more modern materials, although the latter can actually assume more
shapes and textures. The pronounced ability of glass to retain subtle essences coupled with
its long association in the human psyche with high quality has provided little motivation for
the perfume industry to replace it with less traditional materials.