MARKETING
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BRANDING WITH OUR SENSES By Sarah Garner, Digital Bloom
Have you ever walked into a Peter Alexander (you know, the boujee pj store) and been met with the powerful scent of a caramel-smelling candle and the bright lights shining on their luxurious pastel collections? How about a trip to a spa like Endota where dim lights are met with soothing melodies and the calming smell of lavender and bergamot? These experiences were created on purpose and it’s why regardless of the location you visit, you’re greeted with those same smells, sounds and visuals. It’s called sensory branding and it is how brands, both large and small, use the five senses; sight, touch, taste, smell and sound, to create long-lasting connections between them and their customers. We know we sound like a broken record, but concepts like sensory branding truly prove that your brand is so much more than your logo, colours and fonts. We need to think beyond the 66
Beauty Biz Year 14 Issue 6
impact of our visual identity and consider how through sensory touchpoints, we can remind customers of our business. Every smell, taste, sound and touch has the ability to craft a memory about our brand, to the point that every time our audience experiences something similar, our business is at the forefront of their minds. In fact, the more you engage all five senses (aka a wider span of the human brain), the easier it is to strengthen these connections. Let’s take a look at the five senses individually and how tweaks to our branding touchpoints can ignite new feelings, emotions and memories for our customers.
SIGHT It’s not uncommon that the idea of engaging visuals with branding would be the easiest, but in 2021 and beyond, capturing the attention of customers (and maintaining it) is becoming increasingly harder. When navigating our brand’s visual identity, we need to tell a story. Engaging our knowledge of colour and font psychology is a brilliant place to start. We’re able to engage the sense of sight in our customers by evoking emotions through the colours we select for our brand and its touchpoints. For instance, think about the colours you use within your salon, are they that colour
