Story 1 (Part 3): Facebook, I love you — How to design multi-sensory brand experience

From our last article, we provided a basic foundation to build the first sketch of your brand image that is highly resonated with your potential consumers, centralizing on similarity design. The next level of creating “Love at first time” brand experience is how to get your potential partners impressed beyond visual cues and travel to a deeper level of attraction and connection through unique emotions.

Human emotions, according to psychologist Paul Eckman, can be universally categorized into six basic types: happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. The complexity of emotions can be combined and amplified to create a new level of feeling such as love. The process of “falling in love” and “falling in love at the first time” is proven to be driven largely by chemical reactions stimulated in our brains instead of mere physical attractions. Wired in ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth. Much more than a cocaine high, love is obsessive. If a robot or an AI chatbot can bring the same human-like stimulus to your brain neurons, which then generates dopamine (a chemical that incites a high level of pleasure) and norepinephrine (a chemical that increases energy and attention), love infatuation with invisible identities is a possible scenario. In reality, love chemical reactions and physical attractions that highly involve instinctively our five senses may be separated or happen at the same time. In a virtual world, it is brain chemical reactions that lead to indirect physical stimulation and roll on the digital intimacy cycle.

MULTI-SENSORIAL AND FANTASIZING — A LOVE BY INSTINCT

Out of the five senses, smell is the most impactful in memory creating thanks to its closest connection to our hippocampus. An easily recognized sensorial brand experience strongly leveraging scent is perhaps Starbucks when you can smell their noticeable coffee infused in the shop environment set up. Similar tricks are designed for highly experiential brands from fashion, food, restaurant, and cinema to even supermarket. Visual and sound come second in the “flirting” acts. It is universal of “ déjà vu” phenomenon when you experience the sensation of similarity with a smartphone brand whose billboards are shown along your way to work. According to various empirical researches, the sense of sight holds a remarkable strength in discovering changes and differences in the environment and is also the most powerful tool to build the first impression for your products. Sound or music can be injected into our short-term memory then triggering our temporary emotions. Hence, currently, plenty of brand campaigns invest to compose a unique and catchy brand anthem. The senses of touch and taste are more tactical, helping on consumer’s impulse purchasing. Encouragement on physical touch and tasting on products can probably increase consumer’s intent to buy. Though prompt in effects, a good touch strategy can enhance long-term memory. Say it, your first kiss.

The masters of sensory euphoria are best known as artists and content creators who are more than once found as our idols, inspirations and mood leaders. Thousands of videos and contents shared every day on social media deliver a piece of the sharers’ emotions, not merely the information itself. With the help of technologies such as live-streaming, VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), AI (artificial intelligence) chatbots or robots; a more complex and multi-sensorial digital brand experience can be created. A WOW example of a very successful technology-enabled brand experiential campaign is Innisfree 2017 hosted by Lee Min Ho using VR that designed a very realistic and interactive experience for consumers to deliver the fresh and natural world of the cosmetic brand with their host star. A dream came true for Lee Min Ho’s fangirls.

Sensory Stimuli Model and its engage with the Consumer’s Senses for Distinguish Brand by J. Manag. Sci. Vol., 2 (4), 212–218, 2016

That kind of complexity may not be applicable if you have a moderate marketing budget. To think within the box, a simple twist behind five senses physical stimulation in the virtual world can be done solely or strengthened through WORDS. By mastering the art of playing with words, emotions can be encoded just as perfectly, more sexily, obsessively and easily self-created. One word can fantasize millions of possibilities because individual perspectives and visions are unique as a result of unique background, education and social living environment. Polysemy is not an outlier, indeed, 40% of English words have more than one meaning and similar case applies to the majority of current languages. Keep in mind, polysemy falls into 2 categories: synchronic and diachronic. The former occurs to different groups of consumers whose perceptions on a single word vary at a certain point time while the latter happens to the same individual who changes perception after repeated viewing of an ad. Words, in these contexts, speak louder than any motions.

A polysemy advertising slogan from Metropolitan Life (MetLife) Insurance Company in 2001

Do you see the word LEMON or you sense sour?

Do you feel your heart beats a little bit faster when recalling YOUR FIRST KISS?

Can you smell the newly boiled COFFEE?

A sensory way to communicate your brand message