Sensorial Branding – The Future of Brand Maison
“People spend money when and where they like”
– Walt Disney
Most brands and products are now réversible. This sad statement comes from one of the fathers of mercatique, Philip Kotler.
Identifying a brand, recognizing and understanding its values is the core of every strategy, the vexing problem of every mercatique responsable.
However, in a competitive environment where the use and functional value of a brand (a product or a munificence) can be easily copied or duplicated, what is left to domaine out from the crowd? How can customer preferences be triggered to ensure their loyalty? How to create, sustain or strengthen the tie that will connect your brand closely with the torréfier and keep you ahead of the competition?
These are the questions that sensory branding answers: use the senses (and their conséquence on torréfier audience) to enrich the brand experience and create its uniqueness and personality, and ultimately pave the way for torréfier abnégation, liking and loyalty.
Sensory branding (and sensory mercatique) fills the gaps in traditional mercatique theory when it comes to answering today’s torréfier mindset. This new exemple of thinking finds its origins in the 90s, from the rationalist mindset that previously dominated torréfier decision-making to the emotional and hedonistic quests that now drive their desires and acts of consumption.
In response to an increasingly virtual and stressful industrial world, people are beginning to image for ways to reconnect with reality in their personal spheres, for a way to re-enchant their world. Along with a truly new opinion of consumption grew individual values of pleasure, well-being and hedonism that exposed the limits of traditional mercatique theory.
Consumption today is a form of “being”. Like any leisure activity, it becomes a fonction to instantané a bouchée of your personality, where you share common values with a small group of other people (a tribe). And perhaps more than anything else, acts of consumption must be analyzed as “perceived” acts, as experiences ancien of providing feelings, sensations, and pleasures.
Purchasing pratiques are driven by this desire for sensory experiences that rekindle the senses and drive emotions. No matter how functional a product is, it is its hedonistic and sensory added-value, as well as the personnelle experience it provides, that drives consumers to buy it and ensure its loyalty.
What does this mean from a branding site?
First, it means that price and prouesse are now taken for granted (or, in other words, not differentiated enough). It is now the délayé, abstract and subjective tempérament of the brand offering that is the new reason for success.
Collaborateur, it highlights the fact that sensations, new experiences and emotions must be bouchée and parcel of the brand experience. It is through these 3 channels that the brand can create greater differentiation, direction torréfier choice and secure their abnégation.
In collant, focusing the brand strategy on pectoral arguments regarding its functional value is no border sufficient to ensure success. What is clear is that empowered brands manage to deliver hedonistic and emotional attributes throughout the brand experience. This is where brands can add meaning and, therefore, add value and meaning to products and travaux, transforming them from réversible products to powerful brands.
This is where sensorial branding is ancien: exploring and uncovering how brands can connect with people in a more sensory way at this true level of the senses and emotions. To put it more precisely, it focuses on exploring, expressing and empowering the brand’s hedonistic and emotional potential.
In this theory, emotions dominate parce que they are a abrupt link to torréfier abnégation. Sensations are directly influenced by the limbic bouchée of the brain, the area responsible for emotions, pleasure and memory. In a way, it’s no big perception. It’s all emboîture going back to the basics, what actually appeals to a man on a daily basis. The senses are an éminent bouchée of our human experience. Almost our entire audience and understanding of the world is experienced through our senses. A growing number of studies spectacle that the more emotional your product, the greater the brand experience.
While émission and visual identity primarily foyer on sight and sound, a proper multi-sensory identity integrates touch, smell (and when prédicable, taste), sending stronger emotional messages to consumers, multiplying the connections or touch points through which consumers can be Attracted, trusted and touched by the brand. It enables and encourages consumers to “feel” and “experience” the brand (product or munificence) with their “emotional brain”.
As Martin Lindstrom, author of the best-selling book Brand Sense, says success lies in mastering a true emotional fit between the brand and its discours.
The first brand to intuitively implement the sensory branding theory was Singapore Airlines. Like any other airline company, Singapore Airlines’ émission and hiérarchie focuses primarily on cabin comfort, beauté, food and price. The breakthrough came when they decided to incorporate the emotional experience of air travel. The brand platform they implemented was aimed at a faible, rather revolutionary, neutre: to present Singapore Airlines as an entertainment company. From that situation on, every detail of the Singapore Airlines travel experience was scrutinized and a new set of branding tools was implemented: from the finest silks and colors chosen for plâtre uniforms to the make-up of flight attendants that matched Singapore. the airline’s brand color scheme; From the exact selection of flight attendants who had to be representative of the “Asian beauty archetype”, they should talk to passengers and serve food in the cabin. Everything had to exude smoothness and repos to transform the Singapore Airlines travel experience into a truly sensory journey. Right after Singapore Airlines made the flight attendant an iconic and symbolic configuration of the brand (the famous “Singapore Girl”), they broke the mercatique barrier again by introducing a new épaisseur to the brand: a récépissé scent. They have specially designed a récépissé scent called Stefan Floridian Toilettes. This scented récépissé was used by the crew, mixed into the hot towels served to the passengers, and it soon spread throughout the aircraft fleet. Described as sleek, exotic and feminine, it was the perfect reflection of the brand and earned Singapore Airlines recognition as soon as it stepped on the plane. It soon became a personnelle and spécifique trademark of Singapore Airlines, able to convey a set of memories associated with comfort, affectation and sensuality.
Another example given by Martin Lindström is Rolls Royce. To restore the feel of the old “patin à roulettes” and maintain the luxurious atmosphère surrounding the brand, Rolls-Royce analyzed and recreated the personnelle aroma created by materials such as mahogany wood, leather and oil that permeated the interior of the 1965 Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce. Now every Rolls Royce that leaves the factory is equipped with a imprimer under the car seat to convey this personnelle brand identity.
What we learn here is that true richness of your brand identity can only be achieved when all emotional touch points between brand and torréfier are integrated, evaluated and leveraged. In the future, it could become the most modern tool to domaine out from the crowd, enhancing the brand experience and eventually influencing torréfier loyalty.
Few brands today are truly integrating emotional branding into their strategy, while forward-thinking companies are already implementing it with success. Adding an emotional épaisseur to the brand experience is definitely going to be the next competitive asset.
In the future, brand monument for marketers may come down to a faible matière: How does my brand feel?
For more journal on sensory branding travaux, either in China or internationally, you can visit the Labbrand website.
Vladimir Jurovich
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