Appeal to All Senses

A brand that you can com­pre­hend is eas­i­er to un­der­stand. The rea­son be­hind this fact is evo­lu­tion. And we can use it by ad­dress­ing all our five sens­es.

Last week we talked about how it is to ex­pe­ri­ence or get to know a brand. In or­der to have that op­por­tu­ni­ty, the brand has to be made com­pre­hen­si­ble. So we need to com­pre­hend it first — and that is when our sens­es come in­to play.

Your own brand scent

Every hu­man be­ing has five sens­es. They have been with us for­ev­er, they help us to sur­vive in the world we live in, they help us un­der­stand­ing it. We smell, taste, feel, see or hear. Those are the sens­es that make us hu­man, it is with those sens­es that we com­mu­ni­cate with our en­vi­ron­ment and that the en­vi­ron­ment com­mu­ni­cates with us. We have to ad­dress our sens­es in or­der to en­able brand ex­pe­ri­ence. We talked about the choco­late ad­van­tage. If you are not in the lucky po­si­tion to pro­duce choco­late – which usu­al­ly makes the con­sumer hap­py and ad­dress­es more than one sense – you have to take mat­ters in your own hands. As hu­mans, we mem­o­rise things and re­late to a cer­tain prod­uct in a bet­ter way if our sens­es get ad­dressed. Out of the five we have, smelling con­nects with mem­o­ries the fastest. As soon as we smell an odour, our brain con­nects it to a cer­tain mem­o­ry. There is no such thing as clos­ing the eyes or the ears, it is just too fast.

Con­nect the dots and the fea­tures

Ide­al­ly, your cus­tomers think about your com­pa­ny as quick­ly as our brain con­nects smells and odours. And this re­quires a smart and long-term ground­work. Our sens­es are the key to brand ex­pe­ri­ence, all of them. In the dig­i­tal age, al­so vi­su­al im­pres­sions mat­ter, just think about vir­tu­al or aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty. At this point there is more than one way to make a brand com­pre­hen­si­ble and to ex­pe­ri­ence it prop­er­ly. It is im­por­tant that there are con­nec­tions be­tween our sens­es and the brand it­self, so that the brand can be part of our customer’s mem­o­ry. Al­ways avail­able and as vivid as pos­si­ble.