Diageo, Asda, and Dove are just some of the brands waking to the realisation that stimulating consumers' senses, and if possible all five, would be earning entry to purchasers' hearts and their wallets. Why would this multi-sensory marketing need a cross-sensory mindset? Well, ask yourself: would you trust, or even notice, a store's "Gourmet Fresh Food" logo if it smelled like a disused garage? As brand strategists and creatives tasked with steering audiences' perceptions, you'll need to ask whether what they hear, touch, smell, and sometimes taste will make them see as you're intending them to.

The rise of the experience economy is epitomised by consumer demand for the personalised, immersive experiences produced by multi-sensory marketing. Appealing to more senses can increase the areas of the brain being stimulated, maximising the engagement with the brand and the emotional impact caused. It is no surprise then that investing in sensory branding brings significant financial returns. For example, research commissioned on Unilever's Dove brand revealed that the soap's smell contributes $63m (£39m) of annual US revenues, touch yields $34m, and sight accounts for $14m. Researchers found that smell made users feel calm and valued, all emotions that would make the product stick in buyers' memories and persuade them to come back.

Sensory Consistency is Key to Success

Smell, it appears, seems to be the best sensory mode for helping Dove's success, and this explains why the business makes it a focus, clinging close to the recipe for generating this scent. However, relying on smell without considering how other senses are being affected can backfire, as was found by scholars (Morrin & Chebat 2005). They discovered that featuring background music in shopping centres helped to increase sales, but adding ambient scent to the music did not have any impact. This leads us to wonder: did the scent and music in this context complement each other as well as they could have for maximum impact?

The importance of sensory consistency was made clear in a study by Oxford university and sensory architects, Condinment Junkie, who revealed that drinkers in a room with a red colour scheme and fruits found Scotch whisky- the Singleton- up to 13 per cent sweeter by comparison. Meanwhile, drinkers in a wood-panelled room listening to the sound of a crackling fire enjoyed the whisky up to 15 per cent more than in the other two rooms. Charles Spence, Professor of Experimental Psychology and a member of the research team, explains this result by drawing on the rules of sensory dominance, where brains prioritise information from one sense over another. Therefore, awareness of how multiple senses will be processed when received together is crucial to prevent conflicts between sensory cues and hence more effective multi-sensory marketing. Charles speculates how brands will come under growing pressure to make sensory alignment central to their strategy. Speaking to The Guardian, he said: "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."

Diageo has thought about sensory consistency already. Take a look at its Tasting Rooms, opened in August 2013, which welcomes visitors to chambers nestled in its brewery designed by food architects Bompas and Parr, who collaborated with flavour scientists to identify the environmental characteristics that would heighten taste perception. For instance, the offer included "flavour fountains" from which arise vapours of beer, malt, roasted barley and hops, all notable flavours in Guinness. Catherine Keegan, Manager at the Guinness Storehouse, told Marketing Week: "It's to get your sense of smell ready, so that you're tasting with your sense of smell". Diageo has made the most of this opportunity to control drinkers' physical environments, understanding that achieving their end goal of delicious beer can depend on an equally arousing aroma.

A Weapon in the Retailer’s Arsenal

With even beverage brands jumping at the chance to have a physical space they can control, it is clear that retailers have a golden opportunity, not available to E-commerce. Stores arguably have the best shot at sensory alignment, because they can mould a buyers' entire physical experience step-by-step, not merely the on-screen experience. For example, Tigerlily, the Australian swimwear brand, is well-known for its iconic coconut and lime scented candles, which are meant to evoke summer by the sea, and less known for the other sensory nudges that complement and enhance this effect. Amelia Mather, Creative Director at Tigerlily, points out in a News.com interview that smell is not the only sense her creative team thought of: "Visually the stores represented what we stand for, but we wanted them to smell and sound like the beach". Without honing those sounds and sights hinting the seaside, it's doubtable that all consumers would have always thought about beaches, just by sniffing coconut and lime.

Even supermarkets who showcase various brands, can aim to provide shoppers with a coherent, sensorially-aligned brand experience. Take Asda, for instance, which in 2015 worked with Google, YouTube, and Carat UK during Halloween to provide a fully immersive and interactive 360 YouTube video that was shoppable. This capacity to cohesively blend virtual experiences with direct contact could give retailers the upper hand on both maximising and smoothly synthesising users' sensory engagement with a brand. The luxury department store, Neiman Marcus, went further to install a physical and digital smart fitting room, allowing customers to view themselves in clothing from different angles and side-by-side with alternatives. In what is being called "total retail", customers' visual perceptions whilst trialing clothes online should echo what they would see in-store, as well as complementing what they would feel, hear, and smell.

What is a Cross-Sensory Mindset?

Multi-sensory marketing has taught us the importance of targeting more of consumers' senses and in complementary ways. In that case, a visual identity, for instance, is not simply what users perceive through their eyes, but it is shaped by what they feel, hear, taste, and smell.

Let's briefly immerse ourselves in this challenge: imagine you've joined the creative team behind Skittles's "Taste The Rainbow!" maxim. How do you think tasting the rainbow would sound? Are you thinking symphony, or mingling of several outdoor spring jam sessions, or the simulation of languages from around the world?

  • Would it feel like British weather- cold, warm, wet, dry, and cold again?
  • Would it smell like a chaos of Skittles flavours or an open food festival?
  • How would it look- a theme park, a street party, or firework display?

Incorporating this kind of cross-sensory thinking in marketing requires active collaboration between creatives. So if Skittles needed a visual rebrand, it's a call for sound, touch, smell, and taste experts to combine forces with colleagues in the vision department to push out a robust visual identity.