BRAND sense: Sensory Secrets Behind the Stuff We Buy
By Martin Lindstrom and Philip Kotler
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About this ebook
Based on the largest study ever conducted on how our five senses affect the creation of brands, BRAND sense explains Martin Lindstrom's innovative six-step program for bringing brand building into the twenty-first century. The study, covering over a dozen countries worldwide, was conducted exclusively for this book by Millward Brown, one of the largest business research institutions in the world. Drawing on countless examples of both product creation and retail experience, Lindstrom shows how to establish a marketing approach that appeals to all the senses, not simply the conventional reliance on sight and sound. Research shows that a full 75 percent of our emotions are in fact generated by what we smell, and the author explains how to capitalize on that insight. Included are innovative tools for evaluating a brand's place on the sensory scale, analyzing its future sensory potential, and enhancing its appeal to reach the broadest base of consumers. Lindstrom lists the top twenty brands for the future based on their sensory awareness. (The top three? Singapore Airlines, Apple, and Disney.)
Among the book's many fascinating factual highlights are the following:
- That gratifying new-car smell that accompanies the purchase of a new car is actually a factory-installed aerosol can containing "new-car" aroma.
-
- Kellogg's trademarked crunchy sound and feel of eating cornflakes was created in sound labs and patented in the same way that the company owns its recipe and logo.
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- Singapore Airlines has patented a scent that is part of every female flight attendant's perfume, as well as blended into the hot towels served before takeoff, and which generally permeates their entire fleet of airplanes.
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- Starbucks' sensory uniqueness is far less strongly associated with the smell and taste of coffee than with the interior design of its cafés and its green and white logo.
Hailed as the "World's Brand Futurist" by the BBC, Martin Lindstrom is one of the world's top entrepreneurial visionaries, who has changed the face of global marketing with twenty years of hands-on experience as an advertising CEO and adviser to Fortune 500 companies. Firmly steeped in scientific evidence and featuring sensory secrets of the most successful brand names, BRAND sense reveals how to transform marketing strategies into positive business results that no brand builder can afford to ignore.
Martin Lindstrom
Best-selling business author MARTIN LINDSTROM is a well-known international management consultant who routinely sees various kinds of “corporate constipation” all over the world. Over the years, he has learned how to quickly pinpoint and then eradicate these bothersome hurdles in companies of all sizes.
Read more from Martin Lindstrom
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ministry Of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for BRAND sense
25 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Now while he made sense, and a lot of what he said did resonate he did miss a few things. He missed that while there are sounds associated with brands that people dislike websites that have sounds that can't be turned off. He also missed the frequent comment by bikers that on a Sunday they get down and their knees and pray, by going around steep corners. He also just focused on some of the major brands and really failed to notice some of the other things associated with some brands. He did speak a lot of truth about some of the concepts and how some brands are wining by using a multi-sensory approach to their brands. That a brand can't just think of itself as a stand-alone, it has to ensure it is done in a certain way, which led to a scary story about Singapore Airlines and a twisted plate!
Overall it came across as a man who is familiar with the story from the consumer research point of view, not really as the real user or the person who is implementing the brand on the coal face. Interesting but somehow it's missing something.
Book preview
BRAND sense - Martin Lindstrom
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Copyright © 2005 by Martin Lindstrom
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TEXT DESIGNED BY PAUL DIPPOLITO
All illustrations were created by Martin Lindstrom.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Lindstrom, Martin
Brand sense: build powerful brands through touch, taste,
smell, sight, and sound / Martin Lindstrom; foreword by Philip Kotler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Brand name products. 2. Business names. 3. Advertising—Brand name
products. 4. Advertising—Psychological aspects. 5. Senses and sensation.
I. Title.
HD69.B7 L548 2005
658.8'27––dc22 2004056438
ISBN 978-0-7432-6784-7
ISBN 978-1-4391-7201-8 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4391-0345-6 (ebook)
For Dorit, Tore, Vibeke, and Allan
You are the words in my life
Tell me and I’ll forget,
Show me and I might remember,
Involve me and I’ll understand.
—Benjamin Franklin
Contents
Foreword: Philip Kotler
1 Start Making Sense
2 Maybe I’m Doing It Right?
3 A Smash Hit
4 And Then There Were Five
5 Being Alive
6 Moving Mountains
7 The Future
Notes
The Brand Sense Research
A Few Words from the Researcher
Acknowledgments
Index
Foreword
Philip Kotler
MARKETING ISN’T WORKING TODAY. New products are failing at a disastrous rate. Most advertising campaigns do not register anything distinctive in the customer’s mind. Most products come across as interchangeable commodities rather than powerful brands.
Yes, there are still powerful brands—Coca Cola, Harley-Davidson, Apple Computer, Singapore Airlines, BMW. They have learned how to make their brand live in the customers’ minds. The brand, of course, must at least deliver a distinctive benefit. No amount of dressing up will make up for this lack. All of the aforementioned brands deliver a distinctive benefit.
But distinctive brands require something more. They have to be powered up to deliver a full sensory and emotional experience. It is not enough to present a product or service visually in an ad. It pays to attach a sound, such as music or powerful words and symbols. The combination of visual and audio stimuli delivers a 2 + 2 = 5 impact. It further pays to trigger other sensory channels—taste, touch, smell—to enhance the total impact. This is Martin Lindstrom’s basic message, and he illustrates it beautifully through numerous cases with compelling arguments.
Most companies take the easy way out to market their brands. They buy a lot of expensive advertising and make clichéd claims. The companies in Martin’s book are much more creative. One of the main reasons to read this book is that it contains a treasury of ideas for bringing new life to brands.
CHAPTER 1
Start Making Sense
IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS FOLLOWING publication of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, I was invited to appear frequently on America’s most popular morning program, the Today show. The topics we covered were various—shopping addictions, whether sex in advertising sells, subliminal advertising, and so on. During a recent appearance, I carried out a focus group with a selection of tweens, ages eight through twelve. My goal? To measure the degree to which sensory branding—that is to say, the use of fragrances, sounds, and even textures to enhance the appeal ofproducts—affected these kids. It was like emceeing a strange new game show called Name That Sense.
First I played a handful of well-known songs associated with various well-known companies and TV shows. Most of the children were able to name them immediately, among them Disney, Apple Computer, and the signature theme music from Spongebob Squarepants and NBC. Now it was time for the smell test. The first fragrance that floated out was (and will always be) one of the most evocative aromas in the world.
Oh, I know that smell,
one said.
Every kid knows that smell,
another broke in.
Okay,
I said. On the count of three, you’re going to tell me what the brand is. Ready? One … two … three—
They all got it: Play-Doh! The next two fragrances? Crayola crayons and Johnson’s Baby Powder. The children identified those, too. Next, we graduated to a brand collage board,
where only parts or fragments of companies’ logos or symbols were visible. Still, the kids were able to identify most if not all of the brands, from Kellogg’s to Pepsi-Cola to MTV to Nike. Some, to my surprise, were even able to recognize the logos of Gucci and Tiffany’s.
After scanning a handful of logos, I brought out a bunch of products from high-end designers, popular department stores, and even some generic clothing I’d picked up from street vendors.
Now, blue jeans are a not uncomplicated item for most fashion-and brand-obsessed middle-schoolers. One of the girls—Olivia—cradled a pair of jeans in her lap.
These are from Abercrombie!
she announced happily.
As offhandedly as I could, I asked, "So how do you know those jeans are really from that store, and not fake?"
"Because of their smell," Olivia replied. She then proceeded to inhale the sweet (some might say sickly sweet) fragrance of the Abercrombie & Fitch jeans she was holding.
What Olivia was holding looked like any other pair of blue jeans. They could have come from Target. They could have come from Macy’s. They could have come from a factory outlet anywhere in America. But this middle-school student had identified those jeans without blinking for one reason only: their unmistakable aroma.
As strange and intriguing as Olivia’s brand preference might sound, my appearance on the Today show couldn’t help but remind me of the first worldwide sensory branding research project I ever carried out, which concluded in 2005. It was a five-year mission involving hundreds of researchers and thousands of consumers across four continents. Our goal was to understand the rationale behind behavior like Olivia’s—and provide a road map for consumers to understand why they were drawn to a product, whether it was an iPod, a jar of Nescafé coffee, or even a simple breakfast cereal.
Olivia, after all, was a living, breathing example of what marketers aspire to when they create a brand. I’ve long wondered: What is it that makes a child (or for that matter, an adult) fall head over heels for a brand like Apple or Kellogg’s? What components of the brand form such a magical, magnetic, long-lasting connection? Does an obsessive belief in a brand ever wilt into disappointment or even boredom?
That is why in 2005’s Project Brand Sense, my team and I went out and asked all kinds of questions of people who have strong affinities for various brands—in some cases, you might even call them love affairs. They willingly, and generously, shared their passions and insights—invaluable information that led me to conclude that if products and advertising want to survive another century, they’ll need to change direction entirely. Yet another ad plastered on a billboard in Times Square simply won’t do the trick. An entirely new—andsensory—vision, one that appeals to our emotions, is what’s required.
I realized then, as I do now, that a brand has to transform itself into a sensory experience that goes far beyond what we see. I also realized that more than anyone on the planet, children seem to bond most profoundly with brands that are truly sensory—that involve sound, touch, smell, and feel. This may not come as a shock when you consider that a typical child’s senses are approximately 200 percent more potent than an adult’s. In fact, when a new mother first cradles an infant, she probably has no idea that a newborn’s sense of smell is more than 300 percent greater than her own. Call it nature’s ingenious way of securing a permanent bond between mother and child.
Let me give you another amazing example of the power of sensory branding. Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. As many people know, postal administrations all over the world are suffering massive declines in revenue. Very few people are sending mail nowadays—packages, sure, but not those white things known as envelopes with something called a stamp placed on its upper right-hand corner. When you think about it, when was the last time you received a handwritten letter in your mailbox? The world far prefers the convenience of email, Facebook, and Twitter. In order to breathe new life into its declining direct mail figures, Royal Mail launched a campaign known as Touching Bands.
Its aim was twofold: to reconnect with consumers who’d drifted away from what was now termed somewhat dismissively snail mail,
and to demonstrate direct mail’s pivotal role in the digital age as a natural partner to new media. The UK-based Brand Sense Agency was tapped to help them explore how we can use our five senses to enhance our affinity to a brand—in this case Royal Mail. The experiment was dubbed Sensational Mail.
The results were, well,
sensational.
The first piece of Sensational
Royal Mail sent out was a personalized letter inscribed on a slab of chocolate—you read that right. Who can resist chocolate—the smooth touch, the smell that makes us salivate, the cracking sound as you break the bar in two, and last but not least, the taste?
Praised as being innovative and eye-catching, the overall response to our Royal Mail chocolate mailing defied all expectations. Three quarters of all its recipients felt it demonstrated how direct mail could engage all five senses, but they also took some action as a result of our mailing experiment, action, I should emphasize, that went over and beyond eating the chocolate letter. Quite simply, they started sending out letters again!
But we wanted to confirm our findings scientifically as well for media planners and advertisers. Using neuroscience and the most advanced brain-scanning technique available today—the fMRI—global research institute Millward Brown studied the brains of twenty men and women in the UK to find out whether the Royal Mail experiment
had created true emotional engagement, that is to say, a potent emotional response, in consumers. They wanted to see if volunteers’ brains responded at all differently to material via direct mail than they did to comparable information shown them on a computer screen. For any brand, ad, or entreaty to work (and remain memorable), it has to make its way somehow into the overstuffed workspace that is the human brain. As you might imagine, our brains are adept at filtering out irrelevant information. Emotion gets our attention through our senses—which then influence our decision-making processes. Brands that create an emotional connection to consumers are much stronger than those that don’t—it’s as simple (and complicated) as that.
Millward Brown’s scientific research study confirmed that direct mail—namely, those chocolate-laden entreaties—was far more real
to the brain, and had a definite place
in consumers’ perceptions. Moreover, direct mail was easier for the volunteers’ brains to process, more likely than not to generate emotion, and also able to promote more fluent decision making. In short, the Royal Mail experiment proved conclusively that direct mail was able to penetrate the overcrowded closet that is our mental workspace—a spectacular feat, considering that the majority of us live in an increasingly digital environment.
Another aspect of the new branding I gleaned from my experiences with Olivia and Royal Mail is that a brand should attempt to create a following akin to the obsessive adoration a sports fan feels or even, in some respects, the faith of a religious congregation.
Without taking comparisons to religion too far, we can see the relevance of spirituality for certain aspects of sensory branding. The most memorable, savored brands of the future will be those that not only anchor themselves in tradition, but also adopt religious characteristics as they simultaneously make full, integrated use of sensory branding—period. Each fully integrated brand will boast its own identity, one that’s expressed in its every message, shape, symbol, ritual, and tradition—just as sports teams and religion do.
Evoking something resembling religious zeal, however, is only one objective of the next generation of products and advertising. In order to survive, brands will have to incorporate a brand platform
(meaning a set of associations a consumer makes with a product, or company) that fully unites the five senses. Witness Abercrombie! We live in a landscape where consumers desperately need something to believe in. Ironic though it may sound, as religions struggle to find new constituents, consumers in contrast are desperately seeking something else. Sadly (some might say), more than ever that something else
is, well, brands—a phenomenon you would appreciate even more if you visited China, where the power of brand religion
often seems even stronger than its thousand-year-old faith-based counterparts.
The foundation of this book is a direct result of an extensive research project that sought to investigate the role each of our five senses plays in creating a passionate love affair between a consumer and a brand. Our study also sought to determine to what extent a religious factor—faith, belief, belonging, and community—might serve to guide the future of branding. At first glance, religion and brands might seem almost insultingly far apart. But are they really? Visit any church and even before you enter the building, the first thing you’ll notice is a full-frontal sensory assault, whether it’s the noontime bells pealing across Zurich, Switzerland, or the sounds of prayer overwhelming Istanbul. Inside a church, your senses will continue to be stirred and awakened, whether it’s from the unmistakable fragrance of incense in the air, or the musty odor of the pews. No matter where you live, or what faith you practice, religion sends a series of clear, unmistakable signals via your senses—even if you never glimpse a cross, an altar, a stained glass window, or a yarmulke. Our oldest religions have been around for roughly 3,500 years. Our oldest brands? One hundred and fifty years. That is why I believe that it may be time for brands to borrow respectfully from religion—and learn a few crucial lessons about belief and loyalty.
Moreover, we decided that our Brand Sense study would have relevance only if conducted globally. Our multicultural research team involved people drawn from twenty-four countries, and speaking eighteen languages. Additionally, our global research study had another objective. We wanted to identify growing trends, and explore the evolution of local brands to help us create a solid foundation for the implementation of our fully integrated brand theory, in order for it to adapt to any market regardless of cultural differences and preferences.
I decided to team up with Millward Brown, whose extensive brand knowledge made them an obvious partner for a project of this caliber. The idea—which we dubbed Brand Sense
—took seed in 1999 and eventually developed into a brand research project that involved some six hundred researchers across the globe.
Let me be frank—no one had ever carried out research on sensory perception and religious comparisons to branding before, and we tried our best to remain sensitive to their differences in character, profundity, and ultimate truth. My publisher was seriously concerned, and not unreasonably, either, as I began this book. I went so far as to conduct a series of sessions across the United States to test out my theories in front of live audiences. In particular, I recall one speaking engagement in Washington, D.C., where I showed a photograph of the pope on one side of the screen, and Ronald McDonald on the other. Being a native of Denmark, where traditional faith barely exists, I learned quickly (extremely quickly) that many people elsewhere are highly