This is why Sense Marketing Makes an Impact

Considering the overflow of information that consumers have to cope with nowadays, marketers have been exploring new ways to take their offerings to a higher level.

The perfect positioning on the shelves in grocery stores, pleasant and attractive colour palettes, discounts and coupons: the old marketing tricks still count, but don’t necessarily do the trick for all the gazillion different offerings on the market.

Creativity increasingly becomes more important, and here’s one of those new marketing miracles, called: sense marketing.

With sense marketing, companies try to break through the barriers of their customers in a different way.

By trying to push through their senses, marketers attempt to touch their customers on an emotional level, leading to their feelings and, eventually, their behaviour.

Let’s take a look at how such sensory branding can make a difference.

Sense marketing on a daily basis

Try to recall when you last walked into a bakery. Got it? Okay! Now think about this: what did the bread look like?

Very likely it was nicely shaped, the way a perfect loaf of bread should be shaped like. It was most likely round or square, with a nice crispy crust.

So far, the sight of it was wonderful, yet very possibly tempered with. To make bread look the way we are used to, lots of tricks are used to make it look yummy for your tummy.

So far: sight. What we see influences the way we think products will, in this case, taste like. So bread better looks good, or else it will be hard to sell.

When you walked in there (or perhaps even outside of the bakery, right before you walked in), what do you remember smelling?

Was it the warm, almost sweet and humid scent of roasted grain? Even when the bakery doesn’t bake its bread on the spot?

This little piece of magic is called scent marketing, where aromas are spread to infiltrate the most sensitive sense: smell. It is very powerful, as it can make us relive forgotten memories. The sense of smell is most difficult to ignore, and therefore extremely powerful.

So you bought a loaf of bread. On your way home you were hungry and took a slice or two out of the bag.

What did the bread feel like? Perhaps you were lucky enough for it to still be warm, with a crispy crust and a spongy core?

Yum! If that was not the case, you most likely were a little disappointed and you probably would consider trying another bakery the next time.

Touch is yet another sense that has a possible influence on our buying behaviour, and thus important to incorporate in the design of a product.

In the case of bread, by now you may think: hey! The taste is most important, and right you are.

So what did it taste like? Did you taste the roasted crust? Was it savoury and maybe a little airy? Or did you dislike the taste?

If it doesn’t meet your expectations, you will most likely not eat the entire loaf or  maybe not even buy the bread next time. So we like tasty food, full stop.

Decisions to make

It goes without saying that this is an extremely convenient, simple example of sense marketing concerning a very grateful and understandable product.

Surely it will make you aware of how easy we use our senses when deciding what to (or what not to) buy.

Of course, sense marketing goes way further than the little notions made in this article. But the next time you take a trip to a bakery, make it a conscious one and: allow your sense to go beyond your senses.