What is sensory marketing?
Question: Every so often our CEO sends to all his managers a scanned copy of an “interesting marketing article” he has read. Several of your own Marketing Rx articles were included in his series. Two weeks ago, we received an e-mail with an attached two-page article from the March 2015 issue of the Harvard Business Review. It’s about “The Science of Sensory Marketing.”
His cover note on his email attachment said: “Let’s get ahead of competition by applying sensory marketing to our bank brand. I want a sensory marketing campaign idea at next month’s brand review meeting.”
We met with our ad agency who told us that there’s nothing really new about “sensory marketing.” Since you’re one of the marketing authorities our CEO respects, please tell us what’s really new with sensory marketing that we can use for a sensory marketing campaign for our bank.
Answer: It’s too bad you didn’t give any details about your bank and its marketing experience versus competition. But I will venture to somehow agree with your ad agency. I myself have read the HBR article your CEO circulated. I guess what persuaded your CEO that sensory marketing is a new source of competitive advantage for your bank is the article’s claim that “many companies are just starting to recognize how strongly the senses affect the deepest parts of our brains.”
“Just starting” is a bit of an overstatement. The popularity of the senses in consumer purchase decision making is like both a long-term and short-term fashion cycle. Long term, it’s on and off every 25 to 30 years. In the 1980s to mid-’90s, it was “in.” And now it’s back and riding high. But within a cycle period, it has its ups and downs.
For example, sensory positioning was the “flavor” of the year in 1999 when Paco Undershill’s book, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, became an Amazon best-seller. Then, a lull period took over. Six years later, it was a sensation again in 2005 when Martin Lindstrom came out with his own Amazon best-seller, Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound.
Ardy Roberto’s Salt & Light Ventures brought these two powerhouse speakers here and thousands attended the seminar and bought their books. After about seven years, Aradhna Krishna’s 2013 book, Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior, brought back the fascination with the consumer’s sensory powers. The Krishna book is what the HBR article featured.
These are the “news items” about the consumer’s sense perceptions. Go behind the news and get down to what’s basic. What you’ll find is that the basic ideas in each resurgence are “old” or familiar. Many say that it’s their rebranding that’s new or somewhat new. If you remain at the news level, you’ll hear and you’ll be tempted to agree with many marketers who say that Lindstrom’s was about “Brand Sense.” So how different is that from Krishna’s “Customer Sense.” Then, you’ll hear others saying that the examples, of course, are also new.
But none of these is what is meant by getting down to basics. Getting down to basics is an attitude. Search for what you can learn from the emerging “new sensory marketing model.” Take, for example, Krishna and Lindstrom.
Each is a model of sales productivity from a chosen sensory mix. A quantified example from Krishna traces the sensory-cause-and-sensory-effect in the case of South Korea’s Dunkin Donuts. The causal sensory mix was made up of two sensory inputs: (1) the brand jingle being played on municipal buses, and (2) while an atomizer was releasing inside those buses the Dunkin Donut coffee aroma. The claimed consequent sensory effects were: (1) a 16-percent increased visits to Dunkin Donuts outlets “near bus stops,” and (2) a 29-percent increase in sales at those outlets. Let us not challenge the validity of the research behind these results and assume their likelihood. After all, the author is the director of the University of Michigan’s Sensory Marketing Laboratory. It’s safe to assume her market research know-how.
The practical implication of Krishna’s sensory marketing experiment for your bank is direct and simple. You can play around with a sub-mix of sensory inputs and expect a near 30-percent revenue productivity. In the Dunkin Donuts example, that’s just a sub-mix of two out of five customer senses.
According to the Lindstrom model, there’s something significant about tapping into the sense of smell. The sensory source “co-works” with the sense of tastes. In a previous MRx column, my example of this was about the smell of “ripe yellow Philippine mango.” Just thinking about this scent triggers salivation in you about the taste of ripe yellow Philippine mango. In other words, if your brand succeeds in incorporating the sense of smell, it also succeeds in bringing in the power of the sense of taste. Lindstrom’s book provides a lot of examples on this.
There’s more to learn from Lindstrom’s Brand Sense. In his story of Starbucks, Lindstrom shows the ultimate. If a brand is able to get its customers to effectively perceive a “sensory signature” on each and all of the five senses, the brand attains a strong and sustainable sensory-based positioning. Lindstrom traces Starbucks’ long-term leadership and success to this positioning on five-sensory-signatures.
So where are we and you on sensory marketing? First of all, you must accept the reality that marketing is not an exact science. But it’s improving and every time we have a Lindstrom and a Krishna, we know a little bit more than before. We know how to do good marketing from being quarter-right to being half-right. So let’s be eclectic. Let’s use what’s right in Lindstrom and what’s right in Krishna. Let’s also remember to be cautious. There’s still a long way to go. In combining Lindstrom and Krishna, you may yourself learn what’s the next step forward. Or there will surely be another Lindstrom or another Krishna. Let’s continue learning and improving. Keep your questions coming. Send them to me at [email protected].
