The management of
sensation has become somewhat of an obsession in contemporary consumer
capitalism. This is apparent from the growing sense appeal of
commodities. It is increasingly essential for products to have the right
scent, the right sound and the right touch —as well as the right look—
to elicit the desired response from the consumer. Automobile
manufacturers thus compete with each other not simply to perfect the
performance of their vehicles (i.e. functionality) or their contours,
but also to devise sprays that will give their product that distinctive
«new car smell», to design doors that will give a satisfying thud (and
not a thunk) when closed, and to position seats and controls in such a
way that the driver will experience the car as fitted to his or her own
body. Some cars even come with a sixth sense, blurring the distinction
as to who is doing the driving.
Just as product design (functionality) has been
subsumed within sensory design (aesthetics), so the idea of brand image
has been superseded by that of brand sense. Whereas brands used to be
distinguished by their name and visual logo, now the idea is that they
should ideally register in as many senses as possible. According to
Martin Lindstrom (2005: 11), «Events, moods, feelings, and even products
in our lives are continuously imprinted on our five-track sensory
recorder from the second we wake to the moment we sleep», and the most
effective brand-building strategies recognize this fact, «leveraging»
each of the senses to establish «a true sensory brand experience». He
points to the example of Singapore Airlines, personified by the
Singapore Girl, who not only looks and acts the brand but is also
adorned with the (patented) aroma of Stefan Floridian Waters, selected
for its potential to «kick-start a kaleidoscope of smooth-comfortable
memories —all reflecting the Singapore Airlines brand» (Lindstrom 2005:
15).
The multisensory revolution in contemporary
marketing is sweeping not only product design, and branding, but also
the «atmosphere» of retail establishments. Whereas retailers used to
rely on ads placed in diverse media, billboards, window displays and
in-store lighting to highlight their goods, now they seek to enlist as
many senses as possible for purposes of moving merchandise. The «Unique
Selling Proposition» (USP) has given way to the «Multisensory
Stimulation Proposition» (MSP). The Pier 1 Imports chain of emporia,
with its checklist approach to the senses, is a case in point. A recent
catalogue with the slogan «Get in touch with your sensesTM»
and a list of of the five senses (each bordered in a different colour)
gives the shopper a foretaste of what’s in store (see fig. 1). Pier 1
Imports is filled with wood and wicker furniture, black metal
candlesticks, plush pillows, corduroy and velvet draperies, faux tribal
art, a grand miscellany of decorative items, and a profusion of scented
candles. The spicy sweet scent of the candles immediately envelopes one
upon entry, while the colour scheme is as soothing to the eye as the
easy listening music that plays on the store sound system is pleasing to
the ear. Pier 1 Imports offers a total sensory experience.
 Figure 1
The rationale behind the sensory design of retail establishments
like Pier 1 Imports, and many other venues in to day's «experience
economy», has been theorized in a landmark article by Joseph
Pine II and James Gilmore in the Harvard Business Review.
Pine and Gilmore assert that forward-thinking companies no
longer produce goods or supply services, but instead use services
as the stage and goods as props for creating «experiences»
that are as stimulating for the consumer as they are memorable.
The authors identify a series of «experience-design principles»
which include: Theme the experience (e.g. «entertainment»
restaurants such as Planet Hollywood or the Rainforest Café);
Mix in memorabilia (e.g. an official T-shirt for
a rock concert); and, above all, Engage all five senses:
The more senses an experience engages, the more
effective and memorable it can be. Smart shoeshine operators augment the
smell of polish with crisp snaps of the cloth, scents and sounds that
don't make the shoes any shinier but do make the experience more
engaging. (...)
The mist at the Rainforest Cafe appeals serially
to all five senses. It is first apparent as a sound: Sss-sss-zzz. Then
you see the mist arising from the rocks and feel it soft and cool
against your skin. Finally, you smell its tropical essence, and you
taste (or imagine that you do) its freshness. What you can't be is
unaffected by the mist (Pine and Gilmore 1998: 104).
Pine and Gilmore, like Martin Lindstrom, and other theorists
of the new multisensory approach to marketing, such as Virginia
Postrel in The Substance of Style, and Schmitt and
Simonson in Marketing Aesthetics, all take the five-sense
checklist as their point of departure. The underlying notion
is that the greater the number of senses engaged, the greater
the memorability and the greater the synergy of the experience
so produced. There are, however, at least four problems with
this «checklist» approach to sensory marketing.
The first is that the greater the accent on memorability the
less space there is for product innovation or consumer agency
because the emphasis is on the past (i.e. triggering memories)
rather than the present or future. The second is that many
of the most stimulating colours, and scents, and sounds, etc.,
have already been privatized —that is, trademarked or patented
by first comers or major players— and so the total range of
sensations marketers have to work with has been, and will
be progressively, depleted (Howes 2004).
The third is that the overwhelming emphasis of
these approaches is on hedonics (i.e. pleasurability or stimulus
intensity) at the expense of any serious consideration being paid to the
semantics and syntactics of sense perception. The perils of ignoring
the semantic or associative dimensions of sensory compounding are nicely
illustrated by the results of an experiment involving pine-scented
facial tissues. In this test, a pine fragrance evaluated as «fresh» and
«clean» was added to facial tissues. When the tissues were then tested,
however, they were considered harsh and rough. This was because the pine
fragrance also carried associations of «rough» and «hard» (like pine
bark or needles), which are not desirable qualities for facial tissues
(Classen, Howes and Synnott 1994: 194).
The elementary truth, which this experiment brings
out, should already have been apparent to the investigators, since it is
given in the double meaning of the word «sense». «Sense» refers to
sensation and signification, feeling and meaning, at once. Failing to
anticipate and control for such cross-sensory transfers of meaning can
spell disaster. Furthermore, perception in one modality is always
modulated by what is going on in the other modalities (Howes 2006). The
senses are reactive and interactive, unlike the tracks of a simple
recording device.
The fourth problem with the checklist strategy is that it
cannot of itself overcome «advertising wear-out» when, as
is increasingly the case, all of a given brand’s competitors
are seeking to dress up their products with something for
each of the senses too. This has led to the emergence of an
alternative technique, which involves tapping the sensorial
subconscious, instead of simply blanketing all of the consumer’s
external receptors. This alternative stratagem is best exemplified
by ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) invented
by Gerald Zaltman of Harvard University, author of How
Customers Think. ZMET is predicated on the notion of
synaesthesia rather than synergy. Synaesthesia involves short-circuiting
the conventional five senses model and experience of perception.
It establishes cross-linkages between the modalities at a
subconscious level, and so opens up a whole new terrain —the
terrain of the inter-sensory— for marketers and designers
to work their magic.
The interest of ZMET consists in the way it maps
—or better, excavates— these cross-linkages, and models them in
«actionable ways» (e.g. to guide the development of ad copy or to divine
the best product design and packaging). This ten-step research tool
involves image-collecting, sorting, storytelling, digital imaging, and
creating videos on the part of the research subjects, who are then
invited to participate in a focus-group discussion. (The videos are used
because: «People think differently when they think "in motion" than
when they think in still images or pictures», argue Zaltman and Coulter
(1995: 42)). ZMET also involves subjects being asked to say «what is and
is not the taste, touch, smell, color, sound and emotional feeling»
related to the particular research topic (e.g. a brand name or a product
design) being investigated. For example, one subject’s «nonvisual
sensory images» of a certain brand of intimate apparel included:
the taste of medicine, but not dessert; the feel of sandpaper
and silk, but not of cream; the sound of static, but not
that of a waterfall; the smell of sulfur, but not of roses;
the color brown, but not red; the feeling of anxiety, but
not of peacefulness.
Through tapping the sensorial subconscious in
this way, a wide range of synaesthetic equations is uncovered. These
equations are then worked (along with the visual and verbal material
elicited by other means) into «consensus maps» by ZMET researchers.
Marketers and designers in turn use these «consensus maps» to identify
those sensory transfers that best «focus our attention, capture our
imagination, please us, and enhance persuasion» (Nelson and Hitchon
1999: 355).
The inter-sensory logic behind this latest revolution in
marketing can be discerned behind such advertising headlines
as «Taste the Rainbow» for Skittles candy, or «Hear
the Big Picture» for CBC Radio. An ad which nicely exemplifies
this new emphasis on crossing the senses (instead of simply
compounding them) is presented in figure 2. A splash of rum
on a shot of snow-covered mountains uncovers a vision of a
tropical island paradise. The accompanying slogan reads: «Taste
the feeling». The unexpected juxtaposition of images, coupled
with the crossing of the senses of taste and touch, arrests
the viewer's attention and sets off a cascade of associations.
Instead of blanketing the viewer’s senses this ad mobilizes
them and forges new cross-linkages which lead in multiple
directions.

Figure 2
As for product design, synaesthesia is the idea behind all
the new computer programs which enable users to transform
music into color graphics. But this is obvious. Other design
applications of synaesthesia (using other sensory combinations
besides sight and sound) are being developed all the time.
For example, the cleaner Vim Oxy-Gel (with «active
oxygen») offers «Pure cleanliness you can see and feel!» The
accompanying TV ad shows a female jogger slipping out of her
runners upon stepping into her kitchen and gliding her bare
feet over the floor.
This review of recent developments in the fields of sensory
design, branding and multisensory marketing has revealed how
the concept of synaesthesia is outflanking that of synergy,
and the accent is now on crossing the senses instead of simply
compounding them. But even as intersensory marketing strategies
have begun to supplant the classic multisensory ones, there
remains a deeper problem which has yet to be addressed by
market researchers. This deeper problem has to do with the
fact that we live in a world that is multicutural as well
as multisensory. Culture inflects perception in all sorts
of profound ways, as recent research in the anthropology of
the senses has revealed (Classen 1993; Howes 2004). The next
part of this essay, to be published in a future issue of Percepnet,
will explore the many new lines of investigation which are
opened up when cultural variations in the meaning and use
of the senses are factored into the study of consumer behaviour.
Acknowledgments
Part of the research on which this
report is based was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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