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taste buds in the mouth and 100 touch receptors in a single finger. Now imagine the power if the other sensory mediums are stimulated in combination with sight and sound, there will be an extremely connection and strong recall rate among the customers.
Dr. Gemma Calvert, who holds the chair of Applied Neuroimaging at the University of Warwick, England and founder of Neurosense along with well-known marketer Martin Lindstorm did a research in the field of Sensory Branding. They used Functional Magnetic Resonance scanner and Steady State Typography which is an advanced version of electroencephalograph to analyse parts of the brain which become active when we saw a logo, smelled Johnson & Johnson baby powder, or touched a t-shirt, heard the Nokia ringtone or tasted something. They concluded that sight, smell and sound are equally stimulating. However, when a combination of smell and sight was used, the right piriform cortex(primary olfactory cortex) and the amygdala(codes emotional relevance), parts of human brain, where both stimulated simultaneously. This means that when a pleasant fragrance matches with an equally pleasant visual image, we not only perceive it as more pleasant but are also more likely to remember and recall it.
Such findings have led Marketers to give a serious thought to adopt sensory marketing.
Ever wondered why retailers like Shoppers stop, Westside, and other put their perfume section at the store entrance, or hotel lobbies have a soothing music and lavender fragrance, or vanilla like fragrance hits you when you enter a toy store. Here we are not only greeted and enticed by eyes but also by ears and nose. US based company “Air Aroma” specializes in making fragrances for specific sections of the stores to help seduce customers. This is then connected to the Air-Conditioner duct to spread the signature smell. Many Supermarket chains have caught on to this trend. One can see how bakery section of some stores has “Baked Today, Sold Today” operations and are locate at strategic locations (at the entrance)
Sensory marketing is the need of the hour where companies use sound, smell and touch wherever possible in combination with delightful pictures of the products. The moment you pick a teddy bear at mother care the vanilla fragrance immediately takes you back to the childhood days when you mother used Johnson and Johnson powder on you and you feel tempted to buy the product immediately. Another example is the recent campaign by Dunkin Doughnuts in Seoul where they installed ‘Flavour Radio” a spray in busses. Whenever the jingle of the brand played on the radio, the spray released the aroma of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee into the atmosphere for riders to inhale. The company claim to have spiked their coffee sales by 29% and footfalls increase by 16% at their stores.
FMS Scholastic Council