How to Brand Beyond Visuals: Tapping into All Five Senses for Sensory Branding

COVID-19 has made online shopping a mainstay. It has changed consumers’ purchasing behaviour and removed consumers from physical interactions with your brand and products on grounds. While your business may be online, your tangible product will still eventually land in the hands of your customer. Henceforth, creating an immersive and tactile interaction with your customers through packaging can be a powerful differentiator for your brand.

 

Make a first good impression with sensory branding

Your packaging is an essential direct point of contact your customers have when evaluating your product. If you are selling products online, creating a sensational ‘unboxing experience’ is the only opportunity to connect and wow your customers who may only interact with your brand digitally. Brands can leverage sensory branding to create memorable packaging.

Now, think back on the last bad experience you had when receiving your packaged goods. Be it a dent in the packaging or that pungent smell you had to inhale once you opened it, that colossal disappointment is one emotion you will never forget, so will your customers! Your five senses are the key to influencing perceptions, memories, and emotions.

Visual

Your eyes can be considered one of the most potent gifts known to humankind. People create thoughts around your brand based on what they see. The overall look and aesthetic of your packaging increase your product attractiveness. It is essential to know your packaging is more than just a box with products. It needs to be visually pleasing to the eyes of the customers to boost satisfaction and excitement.

Touch

Touch is one of the primary ways your consumers interact with your brand, yet one of the most potent tools to capitalise on. Ever wondered why some still prefer reading a physical book in this digital era? It is because readers feel more emotionally attached to tangible goods. ‘It just feels good in your hand’ There’s no replacing that sensation of having your favourite book in physical form and the ability to flip through the pages compared to scrolling the pages on a digital screen.

That sense of touch fosters a relationship with the emotional centres in your customer’s brain. It retains the details of the tactile experience, whether it is pleasurable or horrendous. Similarly, the type of paper, texture, and material can influence consumers’ unconscious perceptions, feelings, and even memories with your packaging.

Smell

Another sensory brand element is the consumer’s sense of smell. It possesses tremendous evocative power of memories and experiences. Have you ever sprayed an old perfume and got flashbacks of that particular phase in your life when you used it most? That is the power of smell.

In 2020, beauty brand Etude House announced the launch of a collection of makeup products inspired by Hershey’s Chocolate. Not only does the packaging look like the real deal, but the products smell like it too. Its chocolaty scent excites millions to get a hold of them and allows many to remember this unique set of products not only due to its iconic packaging but its familiar scent.

Scent is a fantastic tool to create long-lasting memory retention, which might explain why some smells can immediately trigger detailed memories and fond associations with a brand. In an age where it is becoming difficult to stand out in a saturated market, smell is one way to differentiate your brand emotionally and memorably.

Sound

The use of sound can also aid in defining, reinforcing, and strengthening your brand’s identity.

Now, you may wonder, how can my packaging amplify this particular sense? It could be as simple as the sound when opening your packaging. Take Coca-Cola as an example; one can easily associate the hissing sound with the brand when opening a soda can. This is a classic example of classical conditioning, where a spontaneous response is made by repeated exposure to the stimuli. It allows an influential association to the brand and produces additional layers of emotional response that still imagery cannot deliver.

Taste

It is no surprise that global warming is on the rise; with over 10 trillion pieces of plastics currently littered in the ocean and 60% of it coming from plastic packaging, many businesses have turned to sustainable ways to package their goods.

Now, imagine eating your water. Yeap, you heard me! Eat, not drink! Thanks to technology, Ooho was launched as the world’s first edible water bottle. Edible packaging is a thing, everyone! Even though taste is not commonly applied in traditional packaging, shouldn’t we start thinking out of the box?

Taste holds a core value in creating a holistic brand experience. Its direct and impactful connection with consumers allows it to heighten brand recall and strengthens brand association. Tapping into it now while the market is still new could easily let your brand outshine others! So, why not?

No doubt, as technology advances, many will be quick to rely on the digital space. However, as we go digital, physical packaging remains an invaluable tactile interaction the brand gets to have with its consumers. Our interdisciplinary approach to branding and design at Creativeans has helped clients create packaging that not only embodies the identity of their brands but provides a multi-sensory brand experience.

If you are looking to sell your product, crafting a memorable unboxing experience that expresses your brand will need more than a cardboard box with your logo on it.