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Problem: Creative ideas & messages
1. How do people use their 5 senses in order to receive
advertising messages?
2. How to develop a
creative message using one or more senses?
LO1: How do people use their 5 senses in orde to receive advertising messages?
1.1 Video about how our senses make us buying stuff without we even notice Here I have an interesting video to introduce the subject. It's about how our body makes us buy more. We normally think that advertisements are only with sight and hearing but also touch and smell are influencing our shopping behavior. Our senses trick us into buying stuff. It all has to do with embodied cognition, the idea that our physical sensations drive our behavior. The video has some interesting cases. Actually the whole video is about how your senses are joking with your sense of judgement. Source: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/10/how-marketers-target-your-senses.html# 1.2 More information about the embodied cognition (from video above) LINK BETWEEN ‘EMBODIED COGNITION’ AND MARKETING EXPLORED AT FFWD
I was intrigued by the embodied cognition and I wanted to know more about it. I found this article about how embodied cognition actually works and how it can help marketeers to better understand the customers and to influence them without they even know. There is still a lot of research about this marketing area but I really think this kind of marketing is the future. We're so tired of all the billboards and tv commercials that the marketeers will need to find another way to reach us. Influencing this embodied cognition will certainly be used in the future.
Andrew Perkins does research to help figure out what makes people buy what they buy. In his presentation at FFWD: Advertising and Marketing Week 2014, Perkins, an assistant professor of marketing at the Ivey Business School, spoke about the unconscious mind and how his type of research may one day help marketers better understand consumer
Andrew Perkins does research to help figure out what makes people buy what they buy. In his presentation at FFWD: Advertising and Marketing Week 2014, Perkins, an assistant professor of marketing at the Ivey Business School, spoke about the unconscious mind and how his type of research may one day help marketers better understand consumer behaviour.
His presentation covered a new area of research called embodied cognition – the idea that mental activity is linked to how we perceive the physical world around us. While Perkins admitted it’s still too early to say how consumer behaviours can be changed as a result of embodied cognition, these types of experiments are the first steps to figuring it out and are something marketers are keeping tabs on.
Those that study consumer behaviour today tend to agree that most of the things happening in people’s heads are going on in the background (or subconscious). Perkins explained that from the time we are young, humans learn the truisms of our physical environment and, as we grow, make more connections between the physical world and the psychological aspect of things. When you’re a child, for example, you learn basic physical concepts simply by being in an environment (i.e. how gravity works, warm versus cold). These early sensorimotor experiences provide what Perkins called “scaffolding” for later, more complex abstractions.
Kids, for example, typically equate warmth with the feeling of being embraced by their mother, and respond psychologically with feelings of safety, social warmth and a lack of fear. Feelings of warmth, Perkins said, are equated with being part of a group while cold is linked to being alone.
As we grow up, we continue to build on these basic original associations with more scaffolding. We add metaphorical layers to our understanding, recognizing concepts like “up equals good” (i.e. the sun is upwards, open skies represent possibilities) while down has more negative connotations (i.e. you fall from grace, you go down the rabbit hole).
We don’t usually realize that this metaphorical thinking is happening, or how it affects our perceptions, but Perkins says it does. Referencing the adage “something smells fishy” to mean something seems untrustworthy or odd, he explained that in one experiment, researchers asked participants in a closed room to judge whether a stranger was trustworthy or not. The smell of fish was added to the room and, lo and behold, the subjects said the person was less likely to be trustworthy.
In another example, study participants were handed a warm cup of coffee, then asked to judge an individual they’d never met. The overall feedback, said Perkins, was that the person had a warm personality, was nice, and participants were more likely to want to get to know them.
“These links are unconscious,” said Perkins. “They just happen.”
With the current retail environment already heavily shaped by curated sounds, smells and visual designs, marketers are watching the research to learn how to better tap into consumer’s thought process when it comes to forming opinions about products.
1.3 Why Great Brands Appeal to All 5 Senses
Why your brand should engage at least one other consumer sense besides sight.
When it comes to defining your brand, you want to create something that sticks. Yet many products and services seek only to advertise visually. According to Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense: Sensory Secrets Behind The Stuff We Buy, businesses can deliver the ultimate branding message by touching on as many senses as possible. “Brands have to be powered up to deliver a full sensory and emotional experience,” says Lindstrom. “It is not enough to present a product or service visually in an ad.”
Make an Emotional Appeal
Lindstrom believes that over the next decade, there will be major shifts in the way we perceive brands. As we’re seeing more with current mainstream brands, companies will need to start appealing to the emotions of customers.
Consider Wrigley 5 Gum brand, whose slogan is “Stimulate Your Senses.” Its commercials depict the pleasurable effects of chewing the gum. Even its website promotes interactivity with the consumer, taking them through a series of James Bond-esque webpages.
Lindstrom discusses how big brands are incorporating different senses into their branding techniques. Small businesses should also begin to re-think their own strategies to not only boost sales, but to prepare the company for success in the future world of advertising.
Smell
The sense of smell is a powerful tool, and can trigger emotions that aren’t exactly defined, but have a distinctive attachment to an object or place. Retailers like Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch are known for the scent that’s pumped throughout the store. Even the "new car" fragrance is sprayed into a vehicle using an aerosol can in the factory.
“Mitsubishi’s ad agency placed a fragrance ad in two major newspapers that stimulated that leathery ‘new car' smell,” Lindstrom says. “The result: the company’s Lancer Evo X sold out in two weeks and the car company’s sales increased by 16 percent, even during a recession.”
Smell can also evoke memories. “Test results have shown a 40 percent improvement in our mood when we’re exposed to a pleasant fragrance—particularly if the fragrance taps into a joyful memory,” Lindstrom says.
Sound
The sense of sound is more easily conveyed, but can just as easily be done wrong in an advertising campaign. A sound can be a jingle, a unique voice, slogan, or familiar noise. But it isn’t enough to have a catchy tune associated with your business.
“Brands with music that ‘fit’ their brand identity are 96 percent likelier to prompt memory recall,” says Lindstrom. “Victoria’s Secret, for example, plays classical music in their stores, which creates an exclusive atmosphere and lends an air of prestige to the merchandise.”
Taste
The sense of taste is most easily conveyed in the food and beverage industry, but not every business takes advantage of it. According to Lindstrom, nearly 18 percent of the Fortune 1,000 companies could incorporate taste into their brands but have yet to explore this option.
The crunching noise made by Kellogg’s cereal isn’t one that comes naturally. The sound it makes was actually created in a laboratory.
“Kellogg’s considers the crunchiness of the grain as having everything to do with the triumph of the brand, which is why their TV ads emphasize the crunch we hear and feel in our mouths,” Lindstrom says.
TouchThis is the area where businesses selling products, especially household items, can really let the quality speak for itself. According to Lindstrom, 82 percent of all brands on the Fortune 1,000 list would be able to take advantage of texture if they were made aware of it.
One example of the power of touch is from the Asda supermarket chain in Britain, a subsidiary of Wal-Mart, which cut out a portion of the plastic wrap on toilet paper brands to allow shoppers to touch the tissue and compare textures.
“This has resulted in soaring sales for its home brand, and the decision by management to allot an additional 50 percent of shelf space to their product,” Lindstrom says.
In a study on the cell phone industry conducted by Lindstrom, he found that 35 percent of consumers stated that the way their cell phone feels is more important than the way it looks.
SightAccording to Geoff Crook, the head of sensory design research lab at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, "83 percent of the information people retain is received visually.”
For obvious reasons, sight is the most powerful tool. Before Coca-Cola began promoting Santa Claus in its signature color, red, he traditionally wore green.
Other ways to take advantage of sight is by shape. Consider perfume bottles. “Statistics show that 40 percent of all perfume purchase decisions are based on the design of the bottle,” Lindstrom says.
“Jean Paul-Gaultier has taken this notion all the way with Fragile, his perfume for women. Fragile comes in a brown cardboard box with the word ‘Fragile’ stamped on it in red. Inside the intriguing package is a magical snowball. Shake it up and a thousand golden flakes dance around a Fragile woman.”
Source: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/why-great-brands-appeal-to-all-5-senses/
1.4 Cleanindustries
Maybe a weird source to find this information but it gives very useful insights in how smell is used and which effect it has on our brain.
The article also gives another kind of advertising here I would not immediately think about.
Sales: Smell is a Powerful Sense - It Can Make You Buy
Smell is a chemical sense tied to the emotional center of the brain. It a powerful sense, it can make us salivate, change our heart rate, attract us to a mate or stir our memories to the pleasurable times in our lives. Smell can also make us buy.
Through our patent pending product, better known as the CUA (Creative Urinal Advertising), the urinal becomes the perfect place to advertise with little to none, vandalism risk as the CUA hangs inside the urinal. Additionally, the CUA sanitizes, deodorizes, minimizes splash-back and keeps unwanted debris away from the drain. Also for the more restrained and/or old fashioned, you can go ad less without compromising any of the other benefits, either way instantly raising the appeal of any room as well as the establishment.Scent Marketing is a growing trend in advertising. The power of scent is not fully understood but it has been applied with success to marketing virtually any type of product. Fragrance is as much a marketing tool these days as a logo and a jingle. “Smell has a greater impact on purchasing than everything else combined,” says Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment & Research Foundation in Chicago. “If something smells good, the product is perceived as good.” One theory, according to Hirsch, is that smells are linked with emotions. "The portion of the brain that controls smell is located in the limbic lobe, the center part of the brain that also controls emotions," he explains. "The quickest way to change emotions is with smell." In restrooms where there are no urinals, we offer the CUA+. This product offers many of the same benefits of the CUA, and it can be equally enjoyed by both men and women. The CUA+ hangs on the wall, or it is placed in a stall. It sanitizes, deodorizes and gives you a place to advertise, and deliver your message in full color, together with a wonderful fragrance, on a beautiful weather and water resistant fabric.
Studies have shown that a scented environment leads to consumers staying longer, and spending more. A study of Las Vegas slot players showed they spent 45% more in a scented environment than those in an unscented one
The secret of scent is it can create a “flow state“, where one loses the normal sense of time and is totally consumed in the event. The flow state can last up to several minutes. Some businesses have gone so far as to try to create a “scent brand” for themselves. The theory is that consumers will associate a scent with a particular brand so that the scent recalls the brand to the consumer. “Nothing is more memorable than smell," Diane Ackerman wrote in her book "A Natural History of the Senses.” "Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines." Oftentimes injecting scent is more subversive. The Boston Globe recently ran an article about the discovery that kids are up to 350 percent more responsive to the five senses than adults, and especially to smell. Some companies are taking advantage of that by infusing their products with a smell that kids will recognize and enjoy. The idea being that a comforting smell will allure customers into buying those products infused with the smell from their childhood throughout their lives. The sense of smell (or olfaction) is our most primitive sense and is located in the same part of our brain that effects emotions, memory, and creativity. Our sense of smell allows us to identify food, mates, and danger, as well as sensual pleasures like perfume and flowers/nature. Sudden scents, like smelling salts, will jolt the mind. Since the olfactory system is located in the brain, the sense of smell is closely tied to memory, mood, stress, and concentration. For example, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, doctors use fragrance to reduce anxiety during medical testing. Doctors from Duke University Medical Center are treating women in menopause with fragrances to alleviate depression and mood swings. Scents used to affect mood or behavior is called aromatherapy. Few ideal places that would benefit from CUA+: • Near the entrance. First impressions are the most important. Delight your customers with a fresh fragrance as soon as they walk in. A fresh scent will make your clients feel welcome. It will also be the last thing they smell and remember when leaving. • In dressing rooms. Over time, the smell of feet and body odor can permeate the carpet in the dressing rooms of clothing stores. • Any public restroom. Especially in restaurants and food industry establishments. A client's appetite can be greatly influenced by their trip to the washroom prior to ordering. • In waiting rooms. Odors can calm and relax. Bring a whole new atmosphere to dentist and doctor waiting rooms, or to a garage waiting room. Waiting is not enjoyable; a calming and soothing scent will help distract the patient/customer. Anywhere unpleasant odors are unwanted. Add a picture, logo, or message, and make it that much more enjoyable, memorable and powerful.
Source: http://www.cleanlink.com/casestudieswhitepapers/details/Sales-Smell-is-a-Powerful-Sense-It-Can-Make-You-Buy--21446
LO2: How to develop a creative message using one or more senses?
The future and past of marketing
Interesting table about how we went from mass marketing over relationship to sensory marketing
Sensory marketing framework => a firm should reach the five human senses at a deeper lever than in mass and relationship marketing.
Because of this, sensory marketing is concerned with a firm's treatment of the customer, that is, with ho it meets the individuals in
a personal, mutual way through dialogue, interactivity, multidimensional communication, and digital technology.
This is different from customer acquisition in mass marketing or customer retention in relationship marketing.
Treatment of the customers should be based on logic and rationality as well as emotions and values to create brand awareness
and establish a sustainable image of a brand. This image is the result of the sensory experiences nan individual has of a brand.
Thus, the human senses, which neither mass marketing, nor relationship marketing takes into considerations, are at the center of
what we call 'sensory marketing'.
Source: Sensory Marketing Door B. Hult,Niklas Broweus,Marcus van Dijk URL:https://books.google.fi/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=YIMisx_1OQMC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=why+use+sensory+marketing&ots=WE0l8vs8wN&sig=U1OIoqNst0Dh13qT-eiaBmj9yX0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=why%20use%20sensory%20marketing&f=false
Model sensory marketing
   1.5 Blogpost about scent marketing and the brainSCENT MARKETING: MAKING CUSTOMERS BY THE NOSE
Freshly baked bread, chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven, newly laundered clothes drying on a line in cold weather, freshly cut grass, lavendar, vanilla, roasted chestnuts, a pine forest, a rose garden, cool fresh air on a dewy morning, a spring garden, Chanel No. 5. Do any of these create a pleasant feeling or trigger a pleasant memory?
Smell is a chemical sense tied to the emotional center of the brain. It a powerful sense. It can make us salivate, change our heart rate, attract us to a mate or stir our memories to the pleasureable times in our lives. Smell can also make us buy. Businesses spend millions trying to attract and keep consumers through the sense of sight and hearing via television and print ads. Well, the savvy businesses are appealing to the sense of smell to persuade consumers to stop, smell and BUY the roses, cars and houses. Scent Marketing is a growing trend in advertising. The power of scent is not fully understood but it has been applied with success to marketing virtually any type of product, including real estate. We are all familiar with the real estate agents’ long held belief that baking bread or chocolate chip cookies during an open house will help sell the house. Maybe the traditional spike in home sales in Spring is really due to hyacinths and daffodils. Studies have shown that a scented environment leads to consumers staying longer, and spending more. A study of Las Vegas slot players showed they spent 45% more in a scented environment than those in an unscented one. Nike shoes received a better evaluation in a scented room. A vanilla aroma was used in NYC’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to reduce anxiety in patients before MRIs—and it worked. Perhaps brokerages could try vanilla air fresheners in their offices to calm anxious home buyers. The secret of scent is it can create a “flow state“, where one loses the normal sense of time and is totally consumed in the event. The flow state can last up to several minutes.So how are companies using scent to sell? They may use scents that highlight their products (candles, coffee, flowers) or some other unrelated aroma, known as “ambient scent”. Stew Leonard keeps his oven running so that customers smell the baked goods. He also roasts almonds and has the aroma blown throughtout the store by fan. Omni Hotels has a lemon grass & green tea scent pumped into its lobbies and public spaces. Plaza Athenee in NYC chose lavendar & citrus. A pleasant mood makes for a pleasant customer who is likely to return to repeat the experience. Rolls Royce reproduced the scent of its great seller, the 1965 Silver Cloud, and sprays it under the seats to recreate the scent of this classic “Roller”. Some businesses have gone so far as to try to create a “scent brand” for themselves. The theory is that consumers will associate a scent with a particular brand so that the scent recalls the brand to the consumer. (Cinnabon comes to nose mind). Samsung is working on a “technological” aroma to create a seductive electronics environment for its customers. These signature scents have served as the basis for attempts to trademark a smell. Although difficult (how do you sniff out infringing smells?), it has been done. Like color before it (Owings-Corning owns the color pink for insulation), smell marks can be legally attached to a brand. In the EU, smell marks have been registered for protection. The first was a Dutch company who trademarked a fresh cut grass scent for use on tennis balls (Wimbledon?), another smell mark went to rose scented tires, & another for the smell of bitter beer applied to flying darts. Singapore Airlines has gone so far as to patent a scent of lotus flowers and bamboo forests that is worn by flight attendants and put on hot towels handed to passengers before takeoff. Could that be the reason for their continued high marks from consumers. Before you decide to use this smell science, be aware that there are cultural biases attached to favored scents. For the Dogon tribe of Mali, the scent of onion is a most attractive fragrance, and fried onions is rubbed on the body as a perfume. Japanese are said to prefer apple. In a Moscow poll, the favorite aroma was “freshly washed clothes, hanging on a line in subzero weather”. We all know buyers who prefer new construction over resales. Could it be they are attracted to the “new house smell” as car buyers are to the new car smell? Hmm..I smell an idea for a product.
Source: http://maximximb.blogspot.fi/2007/03/scent-marketingmaking-customers-by-nose.html
LO2: How to develop a creative message using one or more senses?
Sensory Marketing: How Marketers Bond with Us Through Our 5 Senses
You may have learned about our five senses way back in elementary school, probably on the same day your teacher covered addition or subtraction with double digits (seriously, look back at your notes, you’ll see it there). Although this is useful information, did you know that there’s an industry capitalizing on the use of as many senses as possible to attract you?
No, it’s not dating websites. Today’s marketers are trying to use as many senses as possible in order to get consumers to buy and remember their products. The more senses that are used, the higher rate of retention that will occur.
How do they do that, exactly? I’m glad you asked (otherwise this would be a short blog post).
For each sense, there’s a way marketers can create a stronger bond with us and their product…
Sight
This is what we initially see about the product right away. It’s quite possibly the easiest sense to market with, because we automatically review the product without putting any conscious thought into it. What color or size is it? What’s the styling like? Is there something that will please or could it offend customers?
All of these questions have to be addressed before it even hits the shelves for us to buy. In order to make sure the packaging of a product is the right one to attract customers, marketers will hold small focus groups with several different options they’re considering. The option that receives the best feedback is the winner and therefore the one that will hit store shelves.
Smell
If you’ve been in the mall anytime within the past decade, chances are you’re familiar with scent marketing. Think of walking near a Hollister or Abercrombie & Fitch- how close are you before you start to smell their familiar scent wafting towards you? Sixty feet? Thirty feet? Ten feet? When you catch a whiff, you immediately associate that smell with that store even without having to walk in front of it, let alone go inside. This is exactly what marketers hope for since smell is an extremely strong sense for us to create associations and memories with.
Smells like summer time to me!
Some stores take this idea bit further and will have individual departments within their store each have a unique scent to them. Vanilla may be wafting around the women’s department, baby powder in the children’s section, or even the smell of suntan lotion piped into the swimsuit section! This is all in the name of building a stronger connection and getting you to spend more of your money, without realizing it. When you smell suntan lotion your brain is remembering all the years you spent at the beach as a kid, and hey — this suit is on sale and you’ve wanted to go to the beach again, too! And just like that, you bought a swimsuit you didn’t necessarily need (and may not want when you get home later).
Taste
Taste is quite possibly the hardest sense for companies to market to, because it’s difficult to get the point across if the product isn’t edible! Unless USPS starts selling edible packing tape or flavored shipping boxes, don’t count on this one becoming a prevalent marketing technique quite yet. It’s best for food products and supermarket samples.
Hearing
Going into a store and hearing the latest pop song probably isn’t news to your ears (HA- see what I did there?). Music is played to either relax or get customers up and moving around, and consequently buying more merchandise. Stores such as Kohl’s and JCPenney play different music depending on the department in the store. For example, what’s playing in the juniors department is going to be vastly different than what’s playing in the home décor section.
Although this type of marketing may seem like a crazy mish-mash of music in the aisles, it’s a great way for your brand to make a deeper connection with a customer’s taste and interests. The songs teenage girls are listening to aren’t going to be the same ones professional men are going to enjoy hearing, so give people the opportunity to hear exactly what they want when they’re in your place shopping.
Touch
The more we’re sure about a product and feel more comfortable with it, the more willing we are to buy it, right? Well, imagine if you couldn’t touch a sweater before you bought it. You wouldn’t know if it was soft and cozy-feeling or if it was stiff and scratchy. So would you buy it? Chances are you wouldn’t and would walk right past it and out the door. When companies are designing new product offerings, it’s vital they understand and recognize how it will feel to customers.
Marketers want you to remember their brand and their product over their competitors, and while this may seem easy, there’s actually a lot of work that goes into it. Months and months of market research is done on a product before it hits the shelves for customers to buy. Each of these senses is taken into account to ensure we remember it and will buy it again in the future.
Source: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/sensory-marketing-marketers-bond-through-5-senses
Tactile techniques in advertising
Texture
How a product feels to the touch can be an important part of its marketability. For example, if you manufacture blankets, you can appeal to potential customers by advertising the softness of the material, relating it as silky smooth or woolly rough. Emphasize the thickness of the blanket as well so customers gain a tactile understanding of how warm the material will make them feel. Create an online video featuring actual customers picking up your products to help demonstrate its textural feel. You can also take close-up photographs of items so that the texture can be seen.
Shape
Shape is another way to market a product based on its tactile properties. For example, if an item you are selling has a unique shape it will be remembered by customers as being different. The publishing company Palgrave MacMillian reminds business owners of the Coca-Cola bottle, to which customers are intimately connected in part because of its familiar shape and the way it fits in their hands. If you have a product with an unusual and functional shape, use that shape and test it out in focus groups. If you get a positive response, feature the unique shape in a marketing campaign. Create fliers, brochures and emails showing your product to encourage buyers to get their hands on it.
Weight
Weight can be felt in the hands. People often associate the heaviness of an item with its durability and strength or its lightness with ease of use. In the case of furniture, for example, it is generally thought to be more valuable when it is heavy. When weight is used as a marketing factor, customers tend to have a more serious interest, according to Scent Marketing Digest. If you are marketing high-end tables, for example, you want buyers to know these items are weighty because it implies they will endure and the expense will be worth it. Your best marketing will come when shoppers are allowed to touch the products, but you can also create images that indicate weight, such as showing two strong men lifting the item.
Temperature
A physical aspect that is often overlooked when advertising an item is the product's temperature. Many times, this is not an important factor, but with certain things it can be a remarkable feature. If for example, you are selling mints, you might want to capitalize on their "coolness" in the mouth. You could do this by creating advertisements in which someone is bundled up in winter clothes, standing in the snow blowing kisses that emerge as visible breath. Likewise, if you are selling an item that is "hot" in nature, such as cocoa, you can show a cup of chocolate drink that has swirls of steam rising from it. Use your imagination when using temperature to advertise items that are not really high in temperature but that you want to market as "hot" by using images depicting the item as too warm to touch, for instance.
Malleability
Sometimes you can focus advertising on a product's malleability. Plastics, for example, often need to have inherent flexibility to be functional. Putties and silicone sealers are sold mainly because of their ability to be molded. Lots of toys that children enjoy can be manipulated, and that's their primary aspect. One example is clay, which can be stretched and shaped over and over again. When marketing is based on malleability, it is important to demonstrate this trait by using an image or video showing someone using the product so the buyer can virtually experience its uses.
Source: http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/5-tactile-techniques-used-advertising-2066.html
2.1 How does it differ through different channels?
Channel: direct mail
Direct Mail is an essential part of any multimedia or multichannel campaign because of its ability to leverage all 5 SENSES. While new forms of advertising are constantly being adopted, direct mail still remains as one of the most reliable and effective mediums producing ROI.
Source: http://www.shop.minutemanpress.com/franchise/direct-mail-will-help-grow-your-business/
Case study peugeot. Magazine advertising - tactile (touch) marketing in combination with sight
Peugeot Magazine Ad Uses Tactile MarketingWritten By Jennifer Dublino, On November 14th, 2012
Companies are starting to realize that they have to do something different, something involving the senses, to attract consumers’ attention in today’s crowded marketplace. That is exactly what Peugeot did with this magazine ad. Readers are told to punch the ad and then when they turn the page, a mini airbag inflates. Brilliant!
Case studies
Case studies the guardian
Guardian article about how the five senses are already used in marketing. These are not everyday examples and that makes it interesting. It makes me think if these stuff will become 'normal' in the future marketing world.
Hearing the sound of jelly babies screaming as you chew them is no longer the stuff of nightmares, thanks to advancements in sensory technology. In 2011, researchers in Japan developed a headset that triggers different sounds as wearers close their jaws when eating, including the heartbreaking squeals of masticated jelly babies.
Although Bassett’s is unlikely to invest in that particular piece of kit anytime soon, the increasingly high-tech world of sensory marketing is becoming big business for brands. It’s designed to appeal to all the human senses, to engage emotions and thereby influence purchasing behaviour. New technology is helping brands provide sensory experiences that are more immersive and, often, wouldn’t look out of place in a science fiction novel.
Marriott Hotels’ new Teleporter is one such example. The hotel chain is using Oculus Rift technology to allow guests to virtually explore holiday destinations, such as Hawaii. Its “4D technology” enables teleported guests to physically feel aspects of the environment they are in, for example, installed heaters can simulate the sun on your face, while a water sprayer can make you feel the sea spray hitting your skin.
Meanwhile, Häagen-Dazs is using augmented reality to entertain consumers while they wait for its ice cream to become soft enough to scoop. The brand’s Concerto Timer iPhone app can project a virtual violin concerto on top of a tub.
Food for thought
Many brands are following the lead of proponents of “off the plate” dining experiences, such as Heston Blumenthal, whose restaurant The Fat Duck became famed for its Sound of the Sea dish with accompanying iPod playing the sound of waves. Cutting-edge dining now also incorporates the projection of augmented reality imagery on to food – an experience offered to diners at some of the world’s top restaurants, such as El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, which staged an immersive opera-dinner called El Somni, and Ultraviolet in Shanghai.
Russell Jones, the co-founder of Condiment Junkie, the sensory and branding agency behind The Fat Duck’s Sound of the Sea dish, sees brands beginning to take sensory marketing more seriously. “Sensory marketing is currently seen as an add-on,” he says. “But we can see in five years’ time it [becoming] best practice.”
Drinks giant Diageo is a major investor in sensory marketing, launching multi-sensory spaces and apps for brands including Guinness, the Singleton and Johnnie Walker. This investment is driven by science rather than technology, however. As the company’s global design director, Jeremy Lindley, says: “As humans, we’re not logic-based beings; we make decisions primarily off emotions. Really, it’s about marketers understanding more about what makes us human and what motivates us.”
Pairing sound with food and drink has been scientifically proven to enhance flavour. A recent study from Oxford University revealed that high-frequency sounds enhance sweetness in food, while low sounds bring out bitterness. British Airways is banking on this sensory science to help it stand out in the premium market. The airline is launching an in-flight playlist with 13 tracks chosen to enhance the taste of the dishes on its in-flight menu.
Selling experiences
Charles Spence, the experimental psychology professor behind the Oxford University study, who also worked with British Airways on its synesthetic soundtrack, says that many brands are looking at ways in which they can bring the experience they provide consumers in the retail space into the home. “Everyone now is selling experience,” he says. “In five years’ time, when you go into a wine store… you’ll be able to scan the label on the bottle and get the matching music for your wine.”
The influence of the sensory approach upon new technology is also emerging. One piece of tech leading the charge is the Apple Watch, which will have a tactile GPS function to literally nudge you in the right direction if you get lost.
“As it develops, digital is becoming more touchy-feely and more sensory,” Jones notes. But for future advancements in sensory experiences, the world’s most creative culinary experts are ones to watch, adds Spence: “innovation will happen in hands of the chefs turning technology into something memorable, more sensational and more shocking.”media & tech network
Visually augmented food is certainly something of which we’ll being seeing and eating more. Japanese researchers have shown that augmented reality can trick people into feeling full by making food on the plate appear larger than it is (a godsend to dieters). Spence predicts that in years to come, when certain foodstuffs are no longer in existence, we’ll use Google Glass to project images on to our dishes to give us the impression of the food we used to enjoy.
Technological wizardry aside, for sensory marketing to be successful it should continue to take its cues from human insights. Sam Bompas, the co-founder of Bompas & Parr, the food artists and creators of a multi-sensorial firework display for Vodafone, says: “What you’re trying to do is buy time in people’s brains. The more time you have to spend in someone’s brain in a positive way, the more likely they are to buy your product.”
Article Harvard business review about the science of sensory marketing
The Science of Sensory MarketingFor two decades marketers in a variety of industries have been building expertise in reaching consumers through the five senses—learning to deploy cues, such as the sting from a swig of mouthwash and the scritch-scratch sound of a Sharpie pen, that can intensify perceptions of brands. The past year has brought a rush of interest in the subject among academics. New research suggests that we’re about to enter an era in which many more consumer products companies will take advantage of sense-based marketing.
Much of the new research centers on “embodied cognition”—the idea that without our conscious awareness, our bodily sensations help determine the decisions we make. For example, people who had briefly held a warm beverage were more likely than people who had held a cold one to think that a stranger was friendly; this was demonstrated in an experiment by Lawrence E. Williams, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and John A. Bargh, of Yale. And warm ambient temperatures prompted people to conform to a crowd, a finding of researchers led by Xun (Irene) Huang, of Sun Yat-sen University.
Marketing researchers are “starting to realize how powerful the responses to nonconscious stimuli can be,” says S. Adam Brasel, an associate professor of marketing at Boston College. Work on embodied cognition has begun “blowing up on the academic side,” he adds. At the 2014 Association for Consumer Research’s North American conference, Brasel heard more papers on sensory research presented than at any previous conference. That same year the Journal of Consumer Psychologypublished a special issue on embodiment and sensory perception, with a focus on how sensory inputs can drive consumer behavior.
Aradhna Krishna directs the Sensory Marketing Laboratory at the University of Michigan and is considered the foremost expert in the field. She says that many companies are just starting to recognize how strongly the senses affect the deepest parts of our brains. The author of the 2013 book Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior, Krishna got into the field because she was fascinated by certain questions: Why does wine taste better in a wine glass than in a water glass? Why is an ad showing a piece of cake more engaging when the fork is placed to the right of the cake? Why does the smell of cinnamon make a heating pad seem to work better? Krishna realized that the senses amplify one another when they are congruent in some way. Because cinnamon suggests warmth, it can enhance a heating pad’s appeal and apparent effectiveness. Such influences are subtle—and that’s exactly why they are so powerful. Consumers don’t perceive them as marketing messages and therefore don’t react with the usual resistance to ads and other promotions.
“Taking Sensory Communication to a Whole New Level”
Thinking about sensory effects is an established practice in some consumer industries, such as food, cosmetics, and hospitality. For example, Hershey’s has long been aware that the tactile pleasure people get from unwrapping the foil around a Kiss transforms an ordinary piece of chocolate into a special experience. But many companies are taking their thinking much further. Consider this campaign by Dunkin’ Donuts in South Korea: When a company jingle played on municipal buses, an atomizer released a coffee aroma. The campaign increased visits to Dunkin’ Donuts outlets near bus stops by 16% and sales at those outlets by 29%. Another example is Olay Regenerist thermal facial products, which are engineered to generate heat upon application (although heat isn’t necessary to their functioning) to signal that they are working.
Automakers have paid close attention to the senses for years: Designers work hard to optimize the feel of knobs, the solid noise of a door shutting, and the distinctive new-car smell. Recently they have turned to advanced technologies. For instance, in its 2014 M5 model, BMW mikes and amps the engine sounds through the car speakers, even when the audio system is turned off. The idea is to enhance the car’s sporty feel.
Still, in wide swaths of consumer industries, companies remain focused solely on visual attributes and give little thought to other sensory effects. Product developers and marketers need to change that, Krishna says. Bank executives should make sure that branch offices exude the reassuring, wealth-suggesting aromas of wood and leather. Manufacturers of products with embedded motors should think about those products’ sounds—are they tinny whines or solid, low-pitched hums? Luxury clothing manufacturers doing business online should consider what message is conveyed when goods are shipped in bubble wrap versus high-quality crinkly paper.
For managers looking to learn about sensory stimuli, the new academic work reveals striking instances of senses’ affecting attitude, mood, and even memory more profoundly than words ever could. An experiment Krishna conducted with May O. Lwin, of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, and Maureen Morrin, then of Rutgers University, is just one example. The three found that imbuing pencils with the unusual scent of tea tree oil dramatically increased research subjects’ ability to remember the pencils’ brand and other details. Whereas those given unscented pencils experienced a 73% decline in the information they could recall two weeks later, subjects given tea-tree-scented pencils experienced a decline of only 8%.
“In the past, communications with customers were essentially monologues—companies just talked at consumers,” Krishna says. “Then they evolved into dialogues, with customers providing feedback. Now they’re becoming multidimensional conversations, with products finding their own voices and consumers responding viscerally and subconsciously to them.”
Such conversations, she emphasizes, should be at the center of product innovation and marketing for many brands. Every consumer company should be thinking about design in a holistic way, using the senses to help create and intensify brand personalities that consumers will cherish and remember.
Source: https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-science-of-sensory-marketing
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maandag 16 november 2015
Creative ideas and messages
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