And Then There Were Five
UNTIL RECENTLY, MCDONALD’S hasn’t been coasting along as easily as they would have liked. Changing global food trends and lack of service were important factors in the decline in sales recorded in the latter half of 2003. Rethinking these aspects and addressing some of the problems associated with obesity have gone a long way to reverse this downward trend. The next challenge might be solving the simple fact that too many people still think Ronald smells!
A third of the consumers interviewed in the Brand Sense study thought McDonald’s restaurants smelled like stale oil. In fact, more than a third of consumers surveyed in the United States were quite harsh in their assessment, saying that their dislike of the smell puts them off their food—and off the brand. A larger 42 percent of consumers surveyed in Britain agreed. The United States and Britain are two of McDonald’s largest markets. By comparison, Burger King fared better as only a third of the consumers in the United States, and 30 percent in Britain, felt the same way.
By the same token, don’t ever underestimate the distinctive smell of McDonald’s. Paradoxically, half of the consumers say they love the smell of cooked food, and a visit to McDonald’s makes them salivate. However Burger King again was consistently ahead of McDonald’s in this group, where 70 percent claimed a similar positive sensory association with the Burger King brand.
Food trends worldwide indicate that people are becoming increasingly health conscious. McDonald’s has taken the initiative in developing much healthier items for their standard menu—a sensory opportunity the company isn’t letting pass. To focus only on the smell would fail to paint the full picture of a brand under pressure. Quite a few people—14 percent—claimed the food looks unappetizing. And 15 percent were unhappy with the aesthetics of the restaurants. Consumers in the UK were more damning. Some 24 percent of those affected by the noise in the restaurants said the sound in McDonald’s gave them “negative” feelings. Upon further investigation, it appeared that the sound of McDonald’s is often equated with the sound of screaming kids, and in some instances with the electronic beep of the fryer timer.
What About Tomorrow?
To a large extent, marketers have operated in a two-dimensional world and only occasionally ventured into a broader universe where they leverage all five senses. It’s what consumers want, after all! 4-D simulation games, which include sight, sound, touch, and smell, are a permanent fixture at theme parks and video arcades all across the world. In every major city of the world, sweet aromas and heady scents waft out the doors of many shops specializing in scented soaps and candles, incense, potpourris, and aromatic oils. Aromatherapy in all its guises is designed to help create peaceful and relaxing environments.
As we age, our senses become dulled. Some of our most powerful olfactory impressions are formed in childhood. As I mentioned earlier in chapter 1, children’s sense of smell is 200 percent stronger than adults’ beyond middle age.1 Given the fact that children influence an astounding 80 percent of parents’ purchases,2 appealing to our sense of smell becomes increasingly important.
Of the sample surveyed in the Brand Sense study, 37 percent listed “sight” as the most important sense when evaluating our environment. This was followed by 23 percent of consumers who listed “smell.” “Touch” ranked the lowest on the scale. Generally though, the statistics that emerged showed only a small differential when it came to a sense-by-sense evaluation, leading us to conclude that all five senses are important in any form of communication (not to mention life experience)—as witnessed in our Royal Mail experiment.
This conclusion comes as no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that the entire world of branding has ignored these intuitive findings for so long. Furthermore, our Brand Sense study results revealed that the more sensory touch points consumers can access when they’re thinking about buying a brand, the higher the number of sensory memories are activated. And the higher the number of sensory memories activated, the stronger the bonding between brand and consumer.
Almost every consumer interviewed in our Brand Sense focus groups expressed genuine surprise at the lack of a multisensory appeal in today’s brands. It’s extraordinary when you think of the heights that brands like McDonald’s have scaled without paying any attention to, say, the smell of their restaurants. Based on the Brand Sense study, I found that a multisensory appeal pointedly affects the perception of the quality of the product—and thus the value of the brand. The study further demonstrates a correlation between the number of senses a brand appeals to and the price. Multisensory brands can carry higher prices than similar brands with fewer sensory features.
The Brand Sense study also pointed to several other variables that often come into play in consumers’ minds. For example, the mention of a car brand could possibly evoke a sense of taste. Then again, this may not be related to anything other than the phenomenon that people often eat in their cars. Some brands might conjure up negative sensory associations. (McDonald’s, anyone?) This then manages to negatively impact the total brand perception.
The fact is, each of our senses is inherently interconnected with the others. We taste with our nose. We see with our fingers and hear with our eyes. However, just as we can identify a brand by a smashed bottle, so we can break down the senses to build up and generate a positive connection between we the consumers and the brands we like—and thereby bravely enter the new unexplored territory of sensory branding.
Sound
Sound puts us into the picture, or makes the picture more than an image. As the Inuit asks the visitor coming in out of the cold: “Speak so that I may see you. Add a voice, even a whisper, so that the other is really there.”
DAVID ROTHENBERG
When movie technology was new, people sat in cinemas watching silent movies. The theater was never totally silent because these first moving pictures were often accompanied by a pianist playing along with whatever was happening on the screen. It’s almost impossible to imagine a modern movie without sound. Sound is fundamental to building the mood and creating the atmosphere of whatever narrative is being told. Sound is hard-wired into our emotional circuits. Did you know, for example, that the muscles in the middle ear of a newborn infant reflexively tighten in preparation for the pitch of a human voice?
Hearing is passive; listening is active. The sound of a brand should target both the hearer and the listener, considering that each one is as important in influencing purchase behavior as the other. While hearing involves receiving auditory information through the ears, listening relies on the capacity to filter, selectively focus, remember, and respond to sound. We use our ears to hear and our brains to listen. Sound is emotionally direct and should thus be considered a powerful tool.
The way a brand sounds should never be underestimated. In fact, it can often be the deciding factor in a consumer’s choice. More than 40 percent of consumers believe the cell phone sound—that is, the sound of its ring—is even more important than the phone’s design.
In a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Ronald E. Millman demonstrated that the pace of music playing in the background of stores and restaurants affected service, spending, and even traffic flow.3 The slower the music, the more people shop. The faster the music, the less they spend. Related studies have shown significantly longer dining times for restaurant tables when slow music was played. This results in more money being spent at the bar. The average bill for diners was 29 percent higher with slow music playing in the background than with fast.
Even if we’re more involved in hearing rather than listening, our mood is still affected by what we hear. In a study undertaken by Judy Alpert and Mark Alpert, which explored how music affected mood, they concluded that happy music produces happy moods.4 However, sad music resulted in greater levels of purchase intent, lending credibility to the age-old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”
The Sound of Music
A fascinating experiment once took place in a small Australian village. Local residents, alarmed by the increase in street crime, got together and decided that the best way to confront the problem was to remove the offenders from the main street after nightfall. Instead of taking a traditional more-police, greater-security, and tough-on-crime stance, they chose to play classical music. Every single block began piping out the sounds of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. In less than a week, the town reported a dramatic decrease in crime. The experiment was so successful that the main train station in Copenhagen, Denmark adopted the same approach—with similar results, too.
The Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas experienced firsthand the power of sound. They took special note of the buzz of slot machines and the shower of coins falling into winners’ trays. Great sounds to a victorious gambler, but ostensibly disheartening to the neighbor still pulling that handle and getting nothing but the whir of a losing combination. For a while they replaced the noisy slot machines with “cashless” ones, but to their dismay they found their slot-machine revenue noticeably falling. It seems that a slot machine’s not a slot machine unless it whirs and jingles—and this applies to losers and winners alike. In no time at all, the original machines were brought back to service.
David Anders, a gaming analyst for Merrill Lynch, concurred with the move, adding that the tourist market “is not ready” for coinless slots. The sound of coins popping into and flowing out of the machines is part of any casino’s ambience, he went on, as it “generates excitement and calls attention to the area. It lets people know other people are winning. With cashless slots, I guess you’d hear the buzz of the printer.”5
Mood for Thought
Music creates new memories, evokes the past, and can instantaneously transport us to other places and other times. All three characteristics are present in the Disney World universe. Carefully choreographed sound is piped through the entire park. Even the bird sounds are controlled. The entire environment is designed to capture the hearts of children and awaken the kid inside each middle-aged parent. Theme music and recognizable tunes sung by well-loved and well-recognized characters are an essential part of the complete Disney World experience. From the razzmatazz at the main gate, to the up-tempo walking music playing in the streets, Disney’s signature songs effectively manipulate our moods.
I once worked with a chain of hospitals in the U.S. that suffered from a crushing medical-appointment cancellation rate. So I had an idea: Why didn’t hospital management transform the children’s waiting room into a beach-y, summertime environment? We erected a fence, painted pictures of the beach and the sky on the walls, filled the room with sand and sandy playthings—and within a few weeks, the cancellation rate had fallen dramatically. Here’s another example: About three years ago, I was working in France with a major bank to evaluate customers’ waiting time (the customers weren’t happy about the long lines). Within a month, we’d changed the furnishings from dark to bright, gotten rid of all the clocks, changed the music, wafted in a serene, relaxing fragrance—and customers’ perceived waiting time was consequently cut in half.
As retailers struggle to find ways to differentiate their stores from their competitors’, some are beginning to integrate multisensory components. NikeTown, Borders, FAO Schwarz, and Victoria’s Secret are among a steadily growing list of companies using more than just sight and sound. Victoria’s Secret, for example, plays classical music in their stores, which creates an exclusive atmosphere and lends an air of prestige to their merchandise. These companies are not alone. Today global audio branding company Muzak has an audience of 100 million people who are listening to branded tunes every day on elevators and across malls and stores—while Starwood’s Le Méridien hotel chain plays elevator music that’s about as far from a Muzak version of “Let It Be” as you can get. In many of their hotels, it will instead be a “soundscape” that’s puzzlingly odd, or provocative, such as “horses clopping across water.” Regardless—hotel guests at Le Méridien don’t easily forget it.6
As I mentioned earlier, sound and sight are the two senses already widely integrated in every aspect of marketing and merchandising. Traditionally, sound has focused on appealing to our hearing, at the expense of our listening capabilities—while marketers have pretty much ignored the notion that sound can actually influence our purchasing decisions.
Sound is becoming more sophisticated, and marketers and advertisers will first need to evaluate what role sound will play in their product or service. Specific sounds are associated with specific goods—and sometimes we as consumers aren’t even aware of it. Obviously businesses that traffic in audio will focus almost exclusively on sound. Where sound is an important component of the product, companies would be wise to use it. Even products that have nothing to do with sound can use music as an adjunct to their products. In short, no sound should be ignored.
Because consumers are surrounded by a constant low level of white noise from washing machines, dishwashers, blenders, air conditioners, and the like, many manufacturers once opted for no sound at all. What they found was that by removing the sound, products tended to lose part of their “personality.” They also lost a crucial means of communication with the consumer. In the 1970s IBM released their new improved model 6750 typewriter. The beauty of it, or so IBM believed, was that they’d managed to create a completely silent machine. Well, typists hated it. They couldn’t tell if the machine was working or not! So IBM added an electronic sound to reproduce the functional noise they’d worked so hard to eliminate!
Good audio design has begun emerging in other industries, demonstrating that sound can add something extra to the brand. Luxury cues are often subconscious. Take for example a car door. How inclined would you be to buy a car whose doors closed with a hollow tinny sound? The way a door closes is more important than you imagine. In the mid-twentieth century when the Japanese were seeking to produce a high-quality car, they formed the first unit whose sole responsibility was to manage the challenge of a “branded car sound.”
We need look no further than the Japanese-designed Acura TSX to see just how sophisticated car manufacturing has become—particularly in the area of sensory branding. The engineers methodically refined the design of the door sashes to reduce high-frequency resonance when the doors shut. They also designed a special “bumping door seal” that purposefully transmits a low-frequency vibration to the door itself, creating a sound of “quality.”
Nissan, the car manufacturer, is on the verge of introducing a new method of invigorating drowsy drivers. The company’s new Fuga model comes equipped with an “attention assist” system that infuses the car with a piney forest fragrance via the air conditioning system to wake up a driver who’s been on the road too long and whose eyes are glazing over.7
Nearly a third of the consumers surveyed for the Brand Sense study claim they can distinguish one car brand from another by the sound of their doors closing. Japanese and American consumers are the most sensitive to this phenomenon, with 36 percent in Japan and 28 percent in the United States in agreement. Only 14 percent of the consumers across the countries surveyed cannot distinguish a difference.
Sound is given special attention by car makers and it’s no surprise that before a product hits the production line, its sound has been created by a multidisciplinary team consisting of sound engineers, product designers, and psychologists who’ve ensured that the sound of the product will enhance the values and convey standards of trust, safety, and luxury that befit the brand.
Attention to the quality of sound is now spreading across a wide range of industries. Toy companies, computer hardware, white goods, and electronic goods—all these manufacturers are adopting standard sound quality monitoring and are now conscious of characteristics of sharpness, loudness, tonality, roughness, and fluctuation.
The Branded Sound of Bentley
In July 2003 one of the world’s most prestigious cars, the Bentley Continental GT, was launched—an approximately £ 500 million project.
One of the main aims in car acoustics is to reduce noise—noise from the wind, the road, the suspension, and especially from the engine. What’s more, the interior should be supremely comfortable, offering the ultimate in driving pleasure. The Bentley Continental GT not only had to look like a Bentley, it also had to sound like one. From the very beginning, acoustic engineers decided how the car should sound, and only then did they begin their work in earnest. The Bentley’s sound was such a critical consideration that the engineers were able to influence the design of the car, ensuring that both the intake and exhaust manifolds made a true, unique, and instantly identifiable sound.
Bentley carried out extensive research among existing Bentley owners by testing new additions to the brand as well as the sound quality of other luxury sports cars. They ended up with a sound for the Continental GT that is deep, smooth, muscular, and inspiring. A smart move in a market where 44 percent of consumers (yes, you read that right) indicate that the sound of a car is the primary factor in their choice of the brand.
Once Upon a Sound
Today’s renewed focus on branded sounds is far from new. In 1965 a famous call was registered. It was broken down into a series of ten sounds alternating between low chesty and high falsetto. Defined in a ten-point description ranging from the first “semi-long sound in the chest register” to the final “long sound down an octave plus a fifth from the preceding sound,” this yell belongs to Tarzan. And no one can copy it without due acknowledgment.
The power of Tarzan’s call, the chimes of the NBC network, and the well-known MGM lion roar are sounds millions have been familiar with for decades. And then Microsoft’s start-up sound for Windows came along. Windows is the operating platform for 97 percent of the world’s PC users, which means that more than 400 million people listen to the signature Microsoft sound every day.8
Did Microsoft take advantage of the opportunity? According to our Brand Sense study they did—but only partially. Across major markets, 62 percent of the consumers we surveyed who have access to a Windows operating system with speakers recognized Microsoft’s distinctive start-up sound, and associated it directly with the Microsoft brand. Consumers in the United States and Japan proved to be the most up-to-date, in contrast with the European customers, who were substantially less familiar with the sound.
Given that this is the sound that a great many computer users hear every single day of their lives, the numbers that recognize it are relatively low. That’s understandable when you look at the history of the Windows sound. Since first being released in 1995, Windows has changed its sound four times. The original three-second start-up tune was composed by the avant-garde musician, Brian Eno. His challenge was to create a sound that would be inspiring, universal, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, and emotional. Still, with all due respect to Brian Eno, Microsoft has missed an opportunity to build on their enormous market share. As I explained earlier in chapter 2, there’s a lack of consistency in sound across all Microsoft channels spanning software, PDAs, phones, games, television, and the Internet. Until very recently Microsoft has overlooked the power of sound, leaving the corporation in a situation where they should dedicate their efforts to producing what could potentially become one of the strongest branded tunes in commercial history. If Microsoft continues to tweak its start-up sound every few months, it will take on a generic character in the public’s mind, and—trust me on this—next to no one will recognize it.
These bars of musical notation won’t mean much at first glance, but these simple notes have given Nokia a considerable competitive advantage. Give up? It’s the music for the Nokia ringtone, and it’s been trademarked.
Nokia is the world’s largest cell-phone manufacturer, and so millions of tunes are played, and heard, millions of times a day all around the world—which amounts to thousands of hours of branded sounds for each individual.
Over the years Nokia has spent a lot of money marketing the company. But they’ve hardly spent a dime on promoting its tune—known as the Nokia tune. Nevertheless, the Nokia tune is recognized the world over. Let’s do the math. On average, a cell phone rings around nine times a day. The average length of a mobile phone ring is about eight seconds, leaving its owner exposed to more than seven hours of ringtones a year! And this without even considering the substantial amount of ringtone sound that person hears from other cell phone holders. So, how well has Nokia managed to harness this major branding opportunity?
FIGURE 4.1 A winning formula? The Nokia tune—played by millions of consumers … every day!
Slowly but surely Nokia has built a significant awareness of their brand just by taking advantage of something as simple as their ringtone. Our Brand Sense study shows that 41 percent of consumers across the world recognize and associate the tune with the brand when they hear a Nokia cell phone ring. In the UK, this number is considerably higher, with 74 percent recognizing the tune, whereas in the United States, there’s 46 percent recognition. It’s no coincidence that the most repeated melody in the movie Love Actually, starring Hugh Grant, is the Nokia tune. Filmed in London, the storyline has integrated the Nokia tune as an important ingredient when the insecure Sarah, played by Laura Linney, reveals her addictive love affair with a Nokia mobile phone. No surprise the Nokia tune has become an integrated sound phenomenon in the UK.
The Secret Language of Nokia
Nokia has created a spectacularly high sound recognition across the globe. This sound register involves an almost subliminal recognition associated with various cell-phone functions: accept, reject, recharge, flat battery, and even a built-in alarm to wake you or remind you of an important appointment. Chances are you’re so familiar with the sound palette that you can recognize the sound language of Nokia without even being aware that you know it.
Based on their 39 percent market share, let’s assume Nokia has produced some 400 million cell phones. And assuming that all these phones are still in use, countless millions of people are currently listening to more than seven hours of the Nokia tune a year. This number might be lower since it fails to take into account the large number of consumers who choose other ringtones, as well as the fact that every Nokia phone leaving the factory today is installed with its own default Nokia start-up tune.
Over the past five years Nokia has established a solid indirect branding machine that feeds on our senses in a frequent, highly effective way. The astonishing fact remains that Nokia is not paying one single dollar to secure such enormous exposure.
Here, though, I should add something very important. In Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, my team and I carried out the world’s largest global neuromarketing research study ever conducted. Our volunteers listened to the Nokia tune under an fMRI brain scanner and the results were, to say the least, surprising. The Nokia tune—heard as frequently around the globe every day as “Happy Birthday“—was revealed to be a major turn-off for Nokia mobile phone owners. It reminded them of stress, work responsibilities, and the call they hoped wasn’t coming in from the office. Rumor has it that ever since Buyology was published, Nokia has changed its tune …
Motorola’s Search for the Right Tune …
Besides Microsoft, Nokia’s closest competitor is Motorola. The latter is struggling to achieve the same sort of brand awareness that Nokia enjoys. However an astounding 11 percent of the consumers surveyed in our Brand Sense study mistook the Motorola ring for a Nokia tune. The percentage is even higher in the United States, Motorola’s home market, where 15 percent of people confused the brands, generally assuming, however, that the tune was Nokia’s. Only 10 percent of the consumers we surveyed worldwide recognized the Motorola ring, including 13 percent in their home market. But these are early days. There are still many sound opportunities that are ripe for exploration.
Intel versus Nokia
It wasn’t that long ago if you mentioned the word “microprocessor” you were likely to get a bored, mystified stare. Few mainstream consumers knew anything about the processor, even though it was the “brain” that powered their computers. But today many personal computer users can recite the specification and speed of the processor, in the same way that car owners can tell you if they have a V4, V6, or V8 engine. The awareness of “Intel” has grown along with our awareness of the chip and what it actually does.
Launched in 1991, the Intel Inside program created history. It was the first time a PC component manufacturer successfully communicated directly to computer buyers. Today, the Intel Inside program is one of the world’s largest cooperative marketing programs, supported by thousands of PC makers who are licensed to use the Intel Inside logos, and who spend close to $200 million a year on marketing on top of the cooperative marketing program, which is rumored to have a $1 billion price tag. Did Intel get value for their money? Definitely, considering that 56 percent of consumers across the world recognize the Intel Inside tune. Yet it is intriguing to realize that Nokia achieved sound awareness with only a limited investment, while Intel spent millions attempting to achieve the same goal. This makes Intel literally the only product in the world no one has seen, heard, or touched; yet by using sound and vision as the main pillars of their branding strategy, people the world over can dance to the Intel tune.
Every product has a sound. Your Siemens microwave pings and your Miele dishwasher ding-dongs. Your BMW’s doors, your Dell computer, and your Seiko wristwatch all have their unmistakable sound. Nonelectronic sounds also pervade our life. Corks pop. We hear the opening of the milk carton, the crunching of our cornflakes, the bubbling of a freshly poured soda. There are thousands of brands that have yet to realize the enormous potential available by tapping into sounds and making them an integral feature of what they have to offer consumers.
One thing is certain. It’s only a matter of time before everybody starts making some noise.
Case Study: Bang & Olufsen:
Branding the Sound of Falling Aluminum!
Is there a similarity between the sound of aluminum falling onto cobblestones on a street in Denmark and the sound of the ring of a corded phone? A strange juxtaposition? Perhaps not. If I were to sit you down in a room full of traditional telephones, each ringing the ring of a branded phone, would you be able to identify which brand is which? Naturally you would hear the difference from phone to phone, but would you be able to pick the brand?
Whether we’re talking about AT&T or GE, Panasonic or Sony, no corded phone manufacturer has designed a distinct, user-friendly, and branded sound similar to Nokia’s cell phone tune—except for one which, back in 1993, released their latest model and broke the branded silence.
When the Danish luxury hi-fi manufacturer Bang & Olufsen commissioned composer and musician Kenneth Knudsen to design a unique, silken, attention-demanding sound for the next corded BeoCom 2 telephone, the challenge was to think laterally, and come up with a sound that was recognizably distinct. This sound not only had to be distinct but could also serve as an unmistakable audio logo to brand Bang & Olufsen.
The result is evident. Knudsen combined the sounds of falling aluminum tubes with musical notes, a sound he believes reflects the whole concept of the BeoCom 2. He says, “We call it a ringing tune rather than a tone, as it contains many more elements than a simple note. This ringing tune has an acoustic texture of metal and glass, representing the physical components of the phone itself. Within one second, we wish to communicate a mood, a feeling, an impression; just like you get when you meet the physical product.” The BeoCom 2 ring tune has raised the bar in the manufacture of corded phones. By refining this existing sensory touch point, additional brand equity is established, and another aspect of the Bang & Olufsen brand enters the universe.
Poul Praestgaard, senior technology and innovation manager at Acoustics Research, states that the “humanization” element will become standard in all future developments from Bang & Olufsen. This attitude perfectly supports the core value of the brand, and adds another sensory dimension to the identification of the product.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Here’s a question: Is it possible to broadcast an entire TV commercial without revealing the brand’s logo even once? For that matter, without even mentioning the name of the brand? In the Philippines, Nestlé recently decided to take advantage of their leadership position when they launched a new campaign for their flagship brand, Nescafé. I worked hard with the company’s team to find ways to create a TV ad such as the one in question. The secret? To photograph a red mug and only a red mug (if you’re familiar with Nescafé, you’ll probably be familiar with that iconic red mug). Certainly in the Philippines, the brand had attained a nationwide celebrity whereby consumers could identify it immediately with Nescafé coffee. What we came up with was the company’s first-ever TV commercial—featuring a mini-narrative of a young man returning from the city to a small country town. His welcome-home drink? A red cup of Nescafé. Without ever once mentioning the brand, this highly smashable commercial played on every single one of the brand’s smashable elements, and was instantly taken to heart by bloggers across the Philippines, where it even reached cult status. Today, you’ll have a hard time locating the Nescafé logo in the company’s ads—at the same time sales of the brand have never been higher.
The human brain updates images quicker than we see. It accommodates every turn of the head, every movement, every color, and every image. In describing vision, Dr. Diane Szaflarski says, “The efficiency and completeness of your eyes and brain is unparalleled in comparison with any piece of apparatus or instrumentation ever invented.”9
Vision, of course, is the most powerful of our five senses. According to Geoff Crook, the head of the sensory design research lab at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, 83 percent of the information people retain is received visually. He goes on to say that this is probably because they lack other options.10 The question remains: Is this fact still relevant? Every indication from our Brand Sense study indicates that of all the senses, smell is by far the most persuasive.
When Brand Sense first hit the shelves in 2005, I carried out a series of symposiums across the world. During a session in New York, I had an experience I’ll never forget. A woman approached me and told me she’d temporarily lost her sight six months earlier—and at one point had even wondered whether life was still worth living. Yet as we talked, she revealed a fascinating insight. The first month of her new life without sight, she panicked … and then something very unexpected happened. Suddenly, after a month she was able to find her way around using only her sense of smell, whether it was the location of her neighborhood Starbucks or the street where she knew to turn right that led to her workplace. She even knew when someone was passing her on the sidewalk (and sometimes even knew who it was!). Gradually, her sense of smell became even more intense, as did her remaining four senses. When she finally recovered her sight, she told me, she could smell, hear, touch, and taste better; in fact, every single one of her senses had improved. Occasionally I’ll ask marketers or brand builders to pretend that they’re sightless for forty-eight hours. At first, of course, it’s nerve-wracking, but just like the woman at my New York symposium, they realize that their other senses grow keener and sharper. (I once went so far as to ask a group of McDonald’s executives to visit their restaurants blindfolded. Among other things, it taught them that the company owned much, much more than those iconic golden arches—including smells, sounds, and touch points.)
The reality is that copious quantities of visual information bombard us twenty-four hours a day. Our brains’ natural filtering devices kick in, so the visual effects fail to pack the punch that they potentially could. Yet, only a small 19 percent of consumers we surveyed worldwide believe that the appearance of an item of clothing is more important than how it feels. Whereas a good half of our respondents placed the emphasis on feel rather than appearance.
The fashion industry isn’t alone in experiencing this swing in preference from look to feel. The food industry is witnessing a similar, although less dramatic pattern emerge. More than 20 percent of consumers claim that the smell of food is more important than the taste. Rather than assuming this to be a rejection of design or long-standing taste preferences, it’s more an indication of the emergence of our other senses taking their place in the holistic scheme of a sensual universe. Still, there’s no escaping the fact that distinctive design generates distinctive brands, and successful brands are by their very nature visually smashable.
Just as Nescafé secured the ownership of its container (and the smell we all inhale when we open it which, by the way, doesn’t exist in nature but has been developed over the past decades in labs to ensure that a wonderfully fresh coffee smell assails our nostrils the moment we unscrew the lid), it’s just as possible to secure ownership of a pill. You heard me, a pill. Any man who’s come to rely on his little blue, diamond-shaped pill will know what I’m talking about. It’s Viagra. Viagra is one of the jewels in the pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s crown. Former presidential hopeful, Senator Bob Dole, became one of the paid spokespeople of this drug targeting erectile dysfunction. In the ads he referred to the pill as his “little blue friend,” and promised it “changes lives for the better.”
Viagra is an excellent example of how color and shape can be used effectively, and be protected by a trademark. This combination of pharmaceutical brand identity and product design is recognized globally. By taking advantage of the visual components of the tablet, Pfizer has helped Viagra secure trademarked brand loyalty beyond their drug patent.
Pharmaceutical companies typically distinguish their products by color and shape. Accudose tablets, which treat thyroid conditions, come shaped like a thyroid gland. In its TV ads, AstraZeneca promotes their leading anti-ulcer medication as the “purple pill.” None of this is new. Over thirty years ago, the Rolling Stones referred to a five-milligram Valium in “Mother’s Little Helper,” a sardonic song about females who needed the help of little yellow pills to make it through the day.
Tablets and capsules come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, each intended to differentiate the product, impart a particular emotional “feel” to the drug, and instill customer loyalty. The way a tablet looks is an important aspect in maintaining loyalty. When AstraZeneca decided to replace Prilosec with Nexium, they not only used the same color, but referred to it as the “new purple pill.”
The Shape of Things
Little blue pills are one way of changing individual lives—but an innovative use of shape can change the life, and destiny, of an entire city. Take the recession-plagued town of Bilbao in Basque country in Spain. This industrial port had long dreamed of revitalizing and reinventing their somewhat dilapidated image. After years of planning and negotiation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim foundation, they hired innovative architect Frank O. Gehry to design a one-of-a-kind museum on a large site in the middle of the town.
Gehry designed an organic sculpture. Its swooping titanium-clad curves house a museum that’s so spectacular—and so instantly iconic—that the Bilbao Guggenheim has become one of Europe’s most popular new sites. Tourists are flocking there just to experience the Guggenheim’s galleries. Bilbao, once just another weary industrial town on the European map, has been transformed by a building, which beckons visitors with its courageous, daring, and totally unique shapes.
Innovative architectural structures often become legendary trademarks instantly synonymous with the cities where they reside. Only Sydney, Australia can claim the billowing sails of the Opera House that sparkle on the foreshore of the harbor. Jorn Utzon’s revolutionary design with its organic shapes and lack of surface decoration adds to Sydney in every way—it’s a venue for performing art, people congregate on its broad steps, street performers line the walkways, and it offers some of the city’s most spectacular views. The Sydney Opera House and Guggenheim Bilbao are both totally smashable.
Shape is an instantly recognizable visual aspect of any brand. When Theodore Tobler designed a triangular shape for his chocolate bar, its shape stood out more prominently than its taste. In 1906 it was against the law for chocolate makers to use their Swiss heritage in their logo, so as a way of proclaiming his nationhood, Tobler used the Matterhorn mountain to inspire the shape of his product. Fearing that a competitor would duplicate his concept, he applied for a patent on the manufacturing process in Berne. This was granted and Toblerone became the first chocolate product in the world to be patented.
Once, when I was a kid, I decided to melt a Toblerone down into individual chocolate bars. But when I handed the bars out to my friends, no one liked them. Clearly the essence of Toblerone—the very point of it, in fact—is that you have to fight it in your mouth, and that much of the pleasure of eating a Toblerone bar has to do with conquering its distinctive shape.
Seventeen years after Theodore Tobler patented his chocolate, Milton S. Hershey registered his Hershey’s Kisses, and turned his plume-wrapped chocolates into a cultural icon. Over the past century, an entire Hershey world has been built around the original Hershey’s Kisses foundation stone. Every day 25 million Kisses roll off the production line in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It’s a town that bills itself as “The sweetest place on earth,” a place that’s “built on chocolate.” Streetlights are shaped like Hershey’s Kisses, and there’s accommodation, amenities, and activities “in all flavors”!11
Hershey Park is one of the main attractions. Entertainment day and night. Food halls that serve up Hershey chocolate milkshakes and Hershey’s Kisses brownies. You can hold conferences at the Hershey Lodge, stay at Hotel Hershey, and pamper yourself at the spa with treatments like Whipped Cocoa baths and Chocolate Fondue wraps. Sweet.
Chocolates aside, there are many products that have based their identity on their distinct shape. The liquor industry has been at the forefront. Take the distinctive Galliano bottle, which is shaped like a classical Roman column. Finlandia vodka, Kahlúa, Bombay Gin, Johnnie Walker, and Hennessy XO cognac are all products whose bottles’ shapes define their brand.
More recently the liquor industry has looked to the perfume and fashion world for inspiration. Coco Chanel loved perfume bottles. She even displayed the empty ones on her vanity table. She was once quoted as saying, “Those bottles are my memories of surrender and conquest … my crown jewels of love,” and went on to state that, “The bottle is the physical manifestation of the scent it contains, daring, seductive, alluring.”12
The liquor industry would love nothing more than to emulate some of the hope and promise that perfume bottles communicate—which isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound. Packages possess mystery and intrigue. Statistics show that 40 percent of all perfume purchase decisions are based on the design of the bottle. Jean-Paul Gaultier has taken this notion all the way with Fragile, his perfume for women. Fragile comes in a brown cardboard box with the word “Fragile” stamped on it in red. Inside the intriguing package is a magical snowball. Shake it up and a thousand golden flakes dance around a Fragile woman. Close to two million bottles have been sold. No wonder, as today we know that 80 percent of the time we spend making up our minds in duty-free stores as to what perfume to buy is based entirely on the shape or design of the bottle—not what the perfume smells like!
The auto industry is another industry where shape plays a vital role. In many car models, shape has even become the defining feature. Think Beetle, Mini, and the military-inspired Hummer. Within this distinguished, shape-centered crowd, the Lamborghini has carved out its own special niche since it’s the only vehicle that has doors that open upward instead of outward. This unique feature is trademarked. No one else can manufacture a car with this type of door.
Distinctive shapes create the most solid foundation for brand building across channels. We recognize and remember shape and maybe this is what accounts for the longevity of Hershey’s Kisses, Toblerone, and the Beetle.
Touch the Sky
Joy has a texture.
OPRAH WINFREY
Wine bottles are now coming with screw tops rather than corks. Does wine sealed with a cork taste better than wine sealed with a screw top? Probably not, at least not for any recent vintage. Now, this is undeniably a matter of perception, but irrational as it may be, I imagine the wine that I’ve just poured from a just-uncorked bottle is superior. The screw top reminds me of soda, and (again, irrationally) fails to assure me of the quality of the wine. The tactile sensations associated with opening a bottle of corked wine are lost. Or what about New Year’s Eve at the stroke of midnight? Let’s imagine that a top executive at a leading French champagne company decides to replace his corks with screwtops. What would happen? Three … two … one … Happy New Year! But instead of a major pop, partygoers would hear only a sad, subtle, spirit-deflating fizz. The ritual would be gone, the champagne would taste awful, and I wouldn’t even be surprised if the year ahead was a disaster! All this from the simple pop of a cork.
How a brand feels has a lot to do with what sort of quality we attribute to the product. People still go around kicking the tires of a car they’re thinking of buying. This may have been a reasonable test of quality many years ago, but today it’s as irrational as the concept of the cork somehow adding to the taste of the wine. However nonsensical it may be, the feel of a product is essential in forming the perception we have of the brand.
The way a car feels when we sit inside it and run our hands over the steering and controls is of utmost importance to 49 percent of consumers making an automotive choice. Less than 4 percent of the people surveyed suggested that the tactile feeling of a car is irrelevant.
Britain’s Asda supermarket chain, a subsidiary of Walmart Inc., has cottoned on to the economic advantages of touch. They tore off the wrappers from several brands of toilet paper so that shoppers could feel and compare textures. This has resulted in soaring sales for its home brand, and the decision by management to allot an additional 50 percent of store space to their product.
To counteract the Florida humidity, Disney World sprinkled chilled water on people hovering outside its shops, luring them into the air-conditioned world of merchandising. In Las Vegas, Coke has installed vending machines that spray a subtle mist in the faces of passing tourists whenever the temperature reaches 100 degrees Farenheit. According to the designer of this innovation, when the machine begins misting, sales skyrocket.
The tactile qualities of a brand are often not quite as obvious as this bottom line. Perhaps one of the most intriguing results that emerged in the Brand Sense study occurred in the cell phone industry. One would imagine that the release of fashionable cell phones that allow consumers to customize their look and ring would be permanently susceptible to an ever-changing parade of newer, more fashionable models. Well, guess again. Our results revealed that 35 percent of the consumers we surveyed stated that the feel of their phone was more important than the way it looked. An astounding 46 percent of U.S. consumers agreed.
As electronic goods are manufactured in smaller and lighter versions, so consumers’ perception keeps apace. Although heavier weight intuitively feels more substantial, we also like the convenience of small and light. There is one important proviso, however, and that is that the device in question has to be made from quality materials. We don’t want our digital cameras to feel like plastic, nor do we want our PDAs to feel tinny. We demand superior craftsmanship with the most innovative materials.
Many electronic goods are going retro. A newer range of digital cameras is taking its inspiration from pre-digital cameras because consumers are demanding more than technology for its own sake. The average size of a man’s hand is just too large to feel comfortable and confident manipulating a camera that can fit snugly in his palm. Then there’s the issue of shutter sound. These new-generation larger cameras have added an artificial shutter sound that lets you know that a picture’s been snapped.
A device as simple as a remote control can tell us a great deal about the quality of a brand. The heavier the remote, the better the quality—at least according to the consumer, who often makes her quality evaluation based on a product’s feel rather than its look. This might explain why the manufacturer of luxury hi-fidelity equipment, Bang & Olufsen, added weight to their remote control. They have consistently sought to build the ultimate quality items, but have worked equally hard to ensure that consumers have the best possible perception of their brand. They’ve emphasized every aspect of their engineering, from the weight of the remote to the way their products open and close to the precision sound generated by the micro engines.
Losing the Grip on Coke
In 1996 the Coca-Cola Company worked on Project Can, which was designed to transform the packaging from bottle to can. By the end of 2000, Coca-Cola had their first prototype ready for production. The famous bottle was about to morph into a bottle-shaped aluminum can. Then an unexpected hitch developed. The new shape of the full can was unable to carry the weight when stacked. The amount of damage that crushed cans and spillage would cause—well, Coke didn’t even want to think about it. The project stalled and was eventually dropped. From then on, Coke cans were doomed to share their shape with every other soda on the market, with only the company’s signature red distinguishing the brand.
Did the Coca-Cola Company abandon their shaped-can project prematurely? A year later, Sapporo Breweries in Japan managed to achieve what Coke had been working on for years by releasing the world’s first bottle-shaped can. The part-bottle, part-can container developed by Daiwa was an instant success. The distinct taste of Sapporo beer together with the unique shape of the can proved a winning combination.
Although the Brand Sense focus groups confirmed that Coke still ruled supreme in shape recognition in countries that sell Coke in a bottle, this is the first time Coke has lost its edge to another brand. But since the early 1990s, Coca-Cola has seen an erosion in the distinct characteristics that were once uniquely associated with their brand.
A Steady Downgrade
When the Coca-Cola glass bottle was introduced with its distinct shape, size, and weight, it became an overnight icon. As the company embraced new technology and adopted plastic bottles and aluminum cans, the tactile associations so powerfully associated with their product steadily eroded.
The dissipation of the brand didn’t stop at the can. As sales of post mix increased—that’s when the drink is mixed from syrup and carbonated water—and the brand was no longer served in a recognizable container, Coke failed even to be recognized as anything other than cola. Furthermore, in order to secure massive distribution through restaurant-chain outlets, the company agreed to have its product served in paper cups marked with the restaurant’s logo. The only way you know you’re getting a Coke is if you see the logo on the dispensing machine. You drink it out of a cup marked McDonald’s, or Burger King, or Wimpy, or KFC!
Even though limited statistics are available, the trend is clear. Today it is estimated that more than 99 percent of all Coke sold in the United States is served in plastic, metal, or paper—just not glass. The fact is that most consumers in the United States, who want to drink their Coke from a classic bottle, have to make a concerted effort to seek it out.
According to our Brand Sense study, 59 percent of the world’s consumers (and most kids, at least those who’ve seen one) prefer their Coke in a glass bottle. This includes 61 percent of the U.S.-based customers and 63 percent of those in the UK. Despite this evidence, the company continues to decrease its production of Coke in a glass bottle, diminishing one of the company’s most important assets. These statistics from the Brand Sense study confirm that the distinct Coca-Cola touch is slipping through the company’s fingers. What emerged from the study is that in those countries where the glass bottle has been replaced with plastic, Coke’s tactile advantage has been displaced.
Over the past years, Coke has been suffering. Our global study conclusively shows that its major competitor, Pepsi, is gaining an edge on touch. Within the home market, 60 percent of American consumers stated that Pepsi represents the strongest tactile sensation. In contrast, only 55 percent of the consumers surveyed believe that Coca-Cola was distinct. Even though some statistical uncertainty has to be taken into consideration, for Coke that’s an amazing five percentage points less than their century-old enemy. A similar picture appeared when we asked U.S. consumers how the old rivals fared in the physical sensation department. Coke led by a marginal 6 percent, scoring 46 percent over Pepsi’s 40 percent.
Still, over the past couple of years, Coca-Cola has replaced many members of its team, and begun focusing on the importance of tactile sensation. Today, five years after Coke failed miserably in the Brand Sense experiment, the company is back on track. Even though the classic Coca-Cola glass bottle has vanished from most supermarkets, it still reappears around important holiday seasons, reminding customers about the brand’s ownership of what’s probably the most recognizable bottle in the world. Has it helped? Absolutely. Today, an enormous majority of consumers claim that Coke tastes better when they drink it out of a bottle than a can. Which is ironic, considering the high probability that few of these consumers have ever seen Coke in a glass bottle in their lives.
Is Coke Prepared for the Final Battle?
At the international marketplace, glass-bottle Coke is very much alive and still kicking in the face of a well-planned replacement process. Wherever the bottle is still sold, Coke emerges as the clear tactile leader in the soft-drink market. In Europe 58 percent of the consumers in our study stated that they still perceive a unique tactile feeling when drinking a Coca-Cola in contrast to Pepsi’s 54 percent.
A similar yet closer battle is taking place in Japan where the majority of drinks show up in glass bottles. Through our group sessions across the world we noticed that consumers in Spain, Poland, Britain, Denmark, South Africa, Germany, India, and Thailand were all able to describe precisely the tactile feeling of the glass Coke bottle. This unique touch point no longer exists in the United States. The irony of this is that this loss could have been so handily avoided. Unfortunately, this failure is likely to be repeated when Coke’s bottle-replacement plan gears up in the international marketplace.
This is not only a cautionary tale about how Coca-Cola was once about to lose its tactile grip, but a story about how economic efficiencies in production and distribution have consistently downgraded the look, sound, and feel of the product. In addition to this, the difficulty of maintaining quality in the mix machines across the globe has further weakened the distinctive taste of the product. All this results in a consistently weaker brand across not three but all four senses. This downgrade is proving to be lethal to the brand.
The Sniff Test
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.
HELEN KELLER
The smell of a rose, a freshly cut lawn, mothballs, vinegar, peppermint, sawdust, clay, lavender, freshly baked cookies … our olfactory system is able to identify an endless list of smells that surround us daily. Scents evoke images, sensations, memories, and associations. Smells affect us substantially more than we’re aware of. We underestimate just how large a role it plays in our well-being. Smell is also the oldest part of our brain. It’s played a vital role in our human survival, alerting us to distant danger, like fire. Via their sense of smell, animals instinctively know to reproduce, find their prey, and avoid danger.
Smell can also alter our mood. Test results have showed a 40 percent improvement in our mood when we’re exposed to a pleasant fragrance—particularly if the fragrance taps into a joyful memory.13
There are about 100,000 odors in the world—a thousand of them classified as primary odors, not to mention unnumbered combinations of multiple odors. Each primary odor has the potential to influence mood and behavior. Everyone perceives odor differently, since so many other factors come into play—including age, race, and gender, to name just a few variables.
Human beings’ smell preferences have changed over time. In a study published in 1992 by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, the neurologist Alan R. Hirsch asked nearly a thousand adult consumers at random to identify smells that brought on moments of nostalgia. What he discovered was that there was a divide between those born before 1930 and those born after. People born before 1930 cited natural smells—for example, pine, hay, horses, and meadows. Individuals born after 1930 were more likely to mention artificial smells like Play-Doh, marker pens, and baby powder. The year 1960 proved to be another watershed for the smell of freshly cut grass. Those born before that date liked it, while those born after associated it with the “unpleasant necessity of having to mow the lawn.”14
In chapter 2 we established that practically everyone likes the way a new car smells, but what emerged in our Brand Sense study is that some cultures are more affected by aromas than others. A huge 86 percent of consumers in the United States find the smell of a new car appealing, whereas only 69 percent of Europeans feel the same way. Branding cars has moved beyond stylish design and powerful engines to make the car a multisensory experience.
Eau de Rolls-Royce
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent developing the distinct smell of the 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. The smell is impossible to buy! Yet it’s been an essential component in maintaining one of the world’s primary luxury brands. I consider it a small masterpiece in sensory branding.
When Rolls-Royce started getting complaints about their new models not quite living up to their illustrious predecessors, they figured out that the only difference between the new models and their older ones—apart from the obvious—was the fragrance.
The interiors of older “Rollers” smelled of natural substances like wood, leather, Hessian, and wool. Modern safety regulations and building techniques mean that most of these materials are now obsolete, and have been replaced by foams and plastics. The only way that Rolls-Royce could recapture that essence was by artificially mimicking it. Using a 1965 Silver Cloud as a reference, the team began a detailed analysis of the aroma, identifying individual odors. They formulated a chemical blueprint for the essence of their analysis. In total, eight hundred separate elements were found. Some, like mahogany and leather, were expected, but others like oil, petrol, underseal, and felt were more surprising.
With this analysis in hand, Rolls-Royce proceeded to remanufacture the smell. Now, before each new Rolls-Royce leaves the factory, the unique smell of Rolls-Royce is added to the underside of the car’s seats to recreate the smell of a classic “Roller.” Cadillac has gone so far as to release its own signature scent. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the car, Cadillac’s new fragrance for men combines a mixture of grapefruit, chamomile, geranium, tarragon, and cinnamon, a fragrance intended to capture “life, liberty, and the pursuit“—rather than your grandfather tooling around town in a too-big car that gets ten miles per gallon.15
Essentially, this story illustrates the importance of maintaining perception—often without being aware of what the perception actually is.
Eau de Car
Cadillac works equally as hard as Rolls-Royce to ensure a loyal fan base. General Motors is making sure that nothing a potential buyer touches, hears, or smells is left to chance. Cadillac’s new-car smell, that ethereal scent of factory freshness, is in fact a result of customized engineering. In 2003 the company introduced a special scent processed into Cadillacs’ leather seats. The scent—semisweet, semisubliminal—was created in a lab, chosen by focus groups, and is now a part of every new Cadillac put on the road. It even has a name: Nuance.
For years the leather used in luxury cars was tanned, processed, and colored in order to neutralize its natural smell. It was then injected with industrial aromas. Today a process called “re-tanning” replaces fragrant oils into the leather. Research shows that our smell preferences have changed over the years. Believe it or not, we now prefer the smell of artificial leather to real leather—and car manufacturers are responding by going to great efforts to satisfy customer demands.
That takes branding to a whole new level! Ford, for example, has a specific branded aroma, which they’ve used since 2000. Like Ford, Chrysler uses a single fragrance for all their cars. Other manufacturers use different scents for different models, a marketing strategy which bears fruit. According to the Brand Sense study, 27 percent of U.S. consumers believe Ford vehicles have a distinct smell, although only 22 percent can claim the same about Toyota. An even more dramatic trend occurs in Europe where 34 percent consider the Ford smell distinct—in contrast to only 23 percent who claim the same about Toyota.
Ever since Dr. H. A. Roth performed his simple yet powerful color-and-flavor tests in 1988, companies have been trying to develop tools to ensure a powerful connection between consumer perceptions and sensory realities. And the evidence is overwhelming. Take malls, for example. A study was carried out once in a suburban shopping mall to assess the impact of fragrance on consumer shopping. A citrus scent was periodically spritzed into the air—and consumers were duly interviewed as they left the store. The results showed that younger shoppers spent significantly more time in the mall during those times the ambient scent was sprayed.16
Many of the hotels in Starwood’s Le Méridien hotel chain today exude a fragrance of old books and parchment. The scent machines are right in the lobby, though visible only to the most sharp-eyed guests. Their goal? To get visitors in a frame of mind aligned with the hotel’s positioning as a destination for guests in search of new cultural perspectives and glimpses at history—even if they’re situated in a super-modern hotel chain such as Le Méridien.17 But that’s just the beginning. In one UK airport, the aroma of baked chocolate chip cookies wafts through the baggage claim area. In London’s Farnborough Airport, which typically hosts private jets and celebrity passengers, an enticing scent of green tea and lemongrass greets arriving guests. Toy manufacturer Hasbro has just introduced Smellaroos, which injects scents into children’s board puzzles. There are even Yankee Candle–scented puzzles.
Still, little can compare to an event Polish concertgoers experienced during a 2008 production of the Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra in Lodz. The entire building was suffused with the fragrance of roses. What’s more, the fragrances changed according to what was taking place onstage, covering a range from heavenly and delicate during romantic moments to dry and nearly suffocating during times of peril or abandonment. The aim was to involve the audience in a completely sensual, utterly revolutionary way so that they could quite literally inhale what they were seeing.18 This multisensory extravaganza coincided with the 2009 debut of French fragrance designer Christophe Laudamiel’s “scent opera” at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum—a piece of performance art five years in the making that conjoined music with an artfully orchestrated sequence of fragrance.19
But wait until you catch a whiff of what the future holds. A company called TriSenx has developed a product known as the Scent Dome, an addition to your home computer, which can release aromas online via the Internet. The Scent Dome stores an enormous variety of fragrances, which can be liberated via an electronic pulse mechanism. Imagine sending the man or woman of your dreams the aroma of freshly cut flowers, or chocolates. In conjunction with two leading companies (Firmenich and ScentSational Technologies), AquaScents has been set loose on the world—a line of bottled drinking water that gives consumers the experience of smelling fresh lemons or peaches when they unscrew the tops (without any calories or preservatives, either). ScentSational is also developing aroma release technology to inject fragrances into plastic packaging—which could someday include scented cup lids to enhance the cup of freshly brewed coffee you drink on your way to work.
Taste … and Smell
Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose …
JEAN-ANTHELEME BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Taste and smell, which are closely interlinked, are known as “the chemical senses,” since both are able to sample the environment. Many studies indicate that we often eat with our noses, which is another way of saying that if food passes the smell test, it will most likely pass the taste test. In our Brand Sense survey, when questioned about the smell and taste of McDonald’s food, consumers tended to react positively to smell and taste, or negatively to both. They didn’t hate the smell but love the food, or vice versa.
It is possible to take advantage of aroma without including taste. However taste without smell is virtually impossible. Taste is closely related to smell, but it’s also closely related to color and shape. Look no further than the language of chefs who talk about retaining natural color and/or deep color. We consumers associate certain colors with certain tastes: red and orange are sweet; green and yellow are sour; while white tends to be salty.20
The use of taste to support products is by its very nature extremely limited. Despite this, there are still unexplored opportunities that could be exploited. Even the most obvious “taste” products—for example, in the dental care business—have so far failed to make use of this opportunity. As I asked earlier about Colgate, couldn’t the smell and the taste of major toothpaste brands be extended to encompass dental floss, toothbrushes, and toothpicks? Currently the only synergy we see in this department is, with few exceptions, the use of the brand name and the corporate colors.
Apart from the obvious physical barriers that limit companies from taking advantage of taste, the late author Susan Sontag described the elusive nature of this sense: “Taste has no system and no proofs.” Smell works over long distances, while taste quite simply doesn’t. Our emotions can be triggered by a vague whiff of a long-ago fragrance. A mothball can conjure up warm and cuddly feelings for a grandparent; the smell of motor oil can take you back to when you were helping your dad fix the family car.
These bygone associations are referred to as the Proust phenomenon, and are named after Marcel Proust, the great French novelist famous for his memoirs in the early twentieth century. The Proust phenomenon is increasingly being triggered by branded smells. In older studies a large group (80 percent male and 90 percent female) reported having vivid, odor-evoked memories that trigger emotional responses. In 1987, National Geographic surveyed 1.5 million readers and questioned them about half a dozen odors. Gilbert and Wysocki reported on a subgroup of 26,000 within this same survey. Half of those who were forty years of age and over could connect a memory to at least one of the six odors. Memories were recalled in response to both pleasant and unpleasant odors, particularly if the odors were intense and familiar. Dr. Trygg Engen of Brown University conducted studies that contradict earlier findings about the predominance of vision, and concludes that our ability to recall scents and odors is much greater than our ability to recall what we have seen.21
Smell, touch, and taste are, of course, critically important in the language of love. To touch and taste another taps into our most elemental selves, and so our species continues. In fact it’s been shown that extracts from male sweat can affect the regularity of a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Pieter Aarts and J. Stephan Jellinek are psychologists who have studied how people’s feelings, judgments, and behavior are subconsciously shaped by odor. They refer to this as the Implicit Odor Memory.22 Their findings support the premise that fragrance is a decisive factor when a consumer buys, collects, or uses a product. We can therefore conclude that odor plays a very important role in consumers’ acceptance of a brand. Increasingly aroma is becoming a highly effective brand “plus.” Visual power has become dissipated in a world that bombards consumers with visuals all day and all night. There’s so much visual clutter that people are becoming skilled at moving through it wearing “blinkers.” Given this overexposure, attention to visual messages has naturally decreased.
Two identical pairs of Nike running shoes were placed in two separate, but identical rooms. One room was infused with a mixed floral scent. The other wasn’t. Test subjects inspected the shoes in each room before answering a questionnaire. Overwhelmingly, consumers—by a startling margin of 84 percent—preferred the shoes displayed in the room with the fragrance. What’s more, these consumers estimated the value of the “scented” shoes on average to be $10.33 higher than the pair in the unscented room.23
Another experiment was conducted in Harrah’s, a casino in Las Vegas. One area was set aside and infused with a pleasant odor. Over the next few weekends, the revenue of the machines was compared to the earnings of the machines in the unscented zone. Revenues from the scented area were 45 percent higher than those from the scentless counterparts. Understandably, over the past few years Harrah’s casino has spent thousands of dollars to see whether fresher air, wider aisles, and back supports can increase gambling—and today most casinos in Las Vegas including Bellagio, The Venetian, and Mandalay Bay have implemented similar strategies.
The Hilton in Las Vegas went so far as to release a scent manufactured by Alan Hirsch, a Chicago neurologist. The scent, known as Odorant 1, was placed in a slot machine pit, and the increase in revenue paralleled that in the Harrah’s experiment.
The capacity of a brand to include aroma as part of a sensory experience naturally depends on what type of business it is. But whatever the line of business, a steady increase in branded smells is taking off as we speak.
Smell and the Supermarket
All around the world people and companies are becoming aware of the power of scent. Just like the movie theater owner I mentioned earlier, the average Disney World popcorn attendant has a wonderful working knowledge of how smell affects his business. He knows that when business slows down, all he has to do is turn on his artificial popcorn smell and in no time at all he has a line waiting for their popcorn. Woolworth’s in Great Britain knows this, too. In a buildup to the holiday season, twenty of its stores introduced the smell of mulled wine and Christmas dinner. WH Smith, the largest newspaper/magazine chain in Europe, also went all out for Christmas and introduced the smell of pine needles.
Victoria’s Secret has their own blend of potpourri, lending their lingerie an instantly recognizable scent. Superdrug used a chocolate odor in a Central London store on Valentine’s Day. The London Underground filled some of its busier platforms with a refreshing perfumed scent called Madeline, hoping it would add a touch of cheer for the Tube’s three million passengers, not to mention offering them a few moments’ respite from some of their less hygienic fellow commuters.
Several chain stores are starting to introduce branded smells. Thomas Pink, also known as Pink, a British store that specializes in fine shirts, has introduced sensors in their stores that emit a smell of freshly laundered cotton to consumers. The response? Overwhelmingly positive.
The future of brands is not only about instilling new sensory appeals, but identifying the brand’s existing sensory assets. Crayola is one of many companies that has begun seeking to trademark its most distinct smells, starting with their crayons, their primary product, which have no doubt left their odor imprint on the memories of millions of children who drew with them. Just ask those tweens from the Today show, who recognized the scent almost instantly!
The Swiss-based flavor and fragrance company Firmenich, one of the world’s largest aroma and flavor companies, has sniffed the direction where brands are heading. Instead of following the normal aroma and flavor development processes, they have decided to let the brand become the centerpiece of its own development. The move indicates the beginning of a manufacturing trend in the flavor and fragrance industry. By turning the very scientist-driven development process upside down, the firm now ensures that the brand values will control the very signal that their products convey.
In the big picture, companies can take advantage of every single human sense to build a better, stronger, and more durable brand. The road ahead is not necessarily easy. Many challenges are around the corner. Sensory signatures that characterize any brand need to be identified, and it’s vital that we as consumers feel comfortable with sensory brands. As I say, it won’t be simple—but it’s altogether possible, and the prospect is altogether exhilarating.
Highlights
To a large extent marketers have operated in a visual and auditory world, only occasionally venturing into a broader universe where they make use of all five senses. Increasingly consumers are expressing the desire for a complete sensory approach. Of the sample population we surveyed in our Brand Sense study, 37 percent listed sight as the most important sense when evaluating our environment. This was followed by 23 percent listing smell. Touch ranked lowest on the scale. More generally, the statistics show a very small differential when it came to a sense-by-sense evaluation, leading us to conclude that all five senses are extremely important in any form of communication and life experience.
Sound
Hearing is passive and listening is active. The sound of a brand should target both the hearer and the listener since each one is important in influencing purchase behavior. While hearing involves receiving auditory information through the ears, listening relies on the capacity to filter, selectively focus, remember, and respond to sound. Many elements of our everyday life are clearly associated with sounds. If we don’t hear them, we miss them. The sound of a brand adds to the perception of product quality and function. If removed, the perception is diluted. It is extremely important to assess the role of product-generated sound because, increasingly, consumers are becoming more aware—and critical—of this phenomenon.
Sight
Vision has until recently been perceived as being the most powerful of our five senses; however research indicates that this may no longer be true. Whatever the case, there’s no escaping the fact that distinctive design often goes hand in hand with distinctive brands, and successful brands are by their very nature visually smashable. Pharmaceutical companies make their tablets and capsules in all shapes, sizes, and colors, with each one intended to differentiate the product, impart a particular emotional “feel” to the drug and instill customer loyalty. The automobile industry is another category where shape plays a vital role. In many models, shape has become the defining feature.
Taste and smell
Closely interlinked, smell and taste are known as the chemical senses since both are able to sample the environment. Smells affect us substantially more than we’re aware of. Test results have showed a 40 percent improvement in our mood when we’re exposed to a pleasant fragrance—particularly if the fragrance taps into a happy memory.