Why Sensory Marketing Helps a Brand to Stand Out

We are all consumers, continually faced with a growing number of choices and decisions. Before we opt to buy a particular product, our brains make a multitude of decisions, whether we realize this is happening or not. A well-marketed product will positively influence these decisions by utilizing more than one of the five senses, engaging the customer on both a conscious and subconscious level. By using effective, product-specific marketing tools, a brand can achieve genuine customer engagement, ultimately separating brand and product from the crowd.

Sight dominates marketing practices and rightly so, given that 90% of the information perceived and used by the brain is visual(1). Logos, colour schemes, photographs, and the website design are all important in creating a clear brand vision and identity. However, there has been increasing evidence that other sensory inputs drive consumer behaviour(2). The use of sound, touch, smell, and taste, in parallel with sight, can further enhance consumer-product relationships through experience.

Some time ago, The Harvard Business Review suggested that we are entering an era in which sensory marketing will be widely  used to influence consumer behaviour(3). There are already many brands that are making their marketing sensorial and with this a success story. These include the use of smell to sell donuts and coffee(4), touch to sell duct tape(5) and even sound in the form of a catchy song used in an Australian Metro Safety Awareness Campaign(6). Clearly, utilizing the senses is a powerful formula in today’s world of social media and digital marketing. People are becoming blind and numb when it comes to traditional marketing. In an industry like the world of beauty, this is even more obvious.