Sensory Design for Brands and Businesses
“The honeybees work together to fight off disease,” says Alison McAfee at the University of British Columbia, Canada
To Phillips, the green ball suggested a sour taste, while he expected the red to taste sweet. It turned out three-quarters of people associate the same colors with the same tastes and line the spoons up the same way.
Kitchen Theory, a combined London restaurant and food lab, attempts to quantify the impact of these various sensory cues on our palate. In what seems like a fun experience or social experiment will yield important findings on subjects such as how to decrease sugar consumption, or why food on airlines tastes so poor.
Read more here https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-lab-flavor-perception-color-smell-sound/ and here https://www.kitchen-theory.com/
In a first-of-its-kind study, a research team led by Simone Ritter of the Radboud University Behavioral Science Institute in the Netherlands reports the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity can be enhanced by an evocative scent. It is published in the December issue of the always-stimulating Journal of Sleep Research.
Ritter and her colleagues, including Maarten Bos of Harvard Business School, describe a study featuring 49 participants between the ages of 18 and 29. All arrived at a laboratory in the evening and watched a 10-minute video about volunteer work.
They were then sent to bed as they pondered the problem: How can people be motivated to volunteer more of their time? They were expected to provide some innovative answers first thing in the morning.
For two-thirds of the participants, “a hidden scent diffuser spread an orange-vanilla odor while participants watched the movie and were informed about the creativity task,” the researchers write. Before going to bed, they were given an envelope containing a second scent diffuser, which they were instructed to open before falling asleep.
Half of them were exposed to the same orange-vanilla scent that was in the air when they watched the video. The others were exposed to a different odor. The remaining participants (one-third of the total group) were exposed to no scent, either while sleeping or awake.
The following morning, everyone was given two minutes to list the creative solutions they had come up with. Afterwards, they selected what they felt was their most innovative idea—a task that was included since recognizing good ideas is a key component of creativity.
Two trained raters scored all the ideas on a creativity scale, giving high marks to concepts that were both novel and useful. They found the ideas of those who slept with the orange-vanilla odor were far more innovative than those who had slept with a different scent, or no odor at all.
In addition, those in the orange-vanilla group were much more likely to agree with the raters as to which of their ideas was the most genuinely creative. They were both more innovative and more perceptive regarding which of their innovations was the most promising.
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/creatively-blocked-try-this-common-scents-solution-50017
In a list of the best smelling things in life, fresh rain has got to be somewhere near the top—maybe above newborn babies and below chocolate chip cookies? Rain smells so good that there’s even a name for its signature odour: petrichor. Now, using high-speed cameras, scientists have captured a strange effect that could explain why rain smells so wonderful. In the video above you can see little particles popping up off the surface of the droplets, and The Washington Post reports that scientists suspect that it’s these aerosols that are responsible for the aroma.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sifter/2014/01/watch-slow-mo-video-shows-how-rain-gets-its-smell
A team of Dutch social psychologists has proposed a simple solution to the litter problem on trains – infuse carriages with the citrus scent of cleaning product. Martinijn de Lange and his colleagues made their recommendation after conducting a field experiment in which they concealed seven small containers of cleaning product (spiced up with a little Capitaine perfume oil) in the luggage racks of two carriages on a train travelling between Amersfoort-Schothorst and Enkhuizen, a journey of one hour and forty-four minutes.
The amount of rubbish not in bins on these two carriages was collected at the final stop, counted and weighed and compared with the amount of rubbish left in two, scent-free control carriages. Based on measures taken over 18 journeys, the average amount of rubbish on the unscented carriages was more than three times the weight of the rubbish collected from the scented carriages (35.6 grams vs. 11.7 grams). In terms of individual rubbish items, there were an average of 5.1 in the control carriages per journey vs. 2.7 in the scented carriages.
For comparison, rubbish was also collected from these exact same carriages over several journeys a week or so earlier, prior to the use of the scent (the train company agreed to use the same train on the same route during the period of the study rather than following their usual practice of rotating train stock across different routes). In this case, there was no difference in the amount of litter left in the different carriages.
“It seems to be possible to change the littering behaviour of people in a train environment using a simple and relatively cheap intervention,” the researchers said.
Why should the scent of cleaning product have had this effect on passengers’ littering behaviour? de Lange and his colleagues think the effect probably occurs via the non-conscious priming of cleaning related motives and behaviours. Supporting this account, a 2005 lab study (pdf) reported that exposing participants discreetly to the smell of citrus cleaning product led them to list more cleaning-related activities in their plans for the day and to spill fewer crumbs when munching on a cookie. “The positive results of our scent manipulation in a field setting provide support for the idea that the cognitive route of scents to behaviour can be used as a tool for behavioural change,” de Lange and his team said. “Merely dispersing a scent seems to trigger related goals and influence subsequent behaviour.”
de Lange, M., Debets, L., Ruitenburg, K., and Holland, R. (2012). Making less of a mess: Scent exposure as a tool for behavioral change. Social Influence, 7 (2), 90-97 DOI:10.1080/15534510.2012.659509
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2012/03/passengers-litter-less-on-carriages.html
Researchers from the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany have discovered that the skin has olfactory receptors and can therefore ‘smell’.
The tests also showed that olfactory receptors in the skin which were exposed to sandalwood oil significantly boosted wound healing. The team, led by Dr Daniela Busse and Professor Hanns Hatt, found five different types of olfactory receptors and have managed to duplicate one of them, named OR2AT4, which proved to be receptive to a synthetic sandalwood molecule, Sandalore.
This triggered the cloned olfactory cells to dramatically amplify the production and migration of cells – a characteristic process of wound healing. The research findings have been published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
The researchers have also found a variety of other olfactory receptors in the skin, whose function they now intend to research further. The receptors are in the outermost layer of skin, in keratinocytes.
“The results so far show that they possess therapeutic and cosmetic potential,” said Hatt. There are around 350 different types of olfactory receptors in the human nose and their function has also been shown to exist in sperm, the prostate, the intestine and the kidneys, for reasons yet to be discovered.
Odour pleasantness and facial attractiveness integrate into one joint emotional evaluation,” said lead author Janina Seubert, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist involved in this work.
The current study design centered on the principle that judging attractiveness and age involve two distinct perceptual processing methods: attractiveness is regarded as an emotional process while judgments of age are believed to be cognitive, or rationally-based.
While evaluating the images, one of five odours was simultaneously released. These were a blend of fish oil (unpleasant) and rose oil (pleasant) that ranged from predominantly fish oil to predominantly rose oil. The subjects were asked to rate the age of the face in the photograph, the attractiveness of the face and the pleasantness of the odour. Across the range of odours, odour pleasantness directly influenced ratings of facial attractiveness. This suggests that olfactory and visual cues independently influence judgments of facial attractiveness. Jean-Marc Dessirier, Lead Scientist at Unilever and a co-author on the study said, “These findings have fascinating implications in terms of how pleasant smells may help enhance natural appearance within social settings. http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/pleasant_smells_increase_facial_attractiveness Download the paper here >> http://www.monell.org/images/uploads/Seubert_PR_final.pdf More related media coverage:
According to our friends at Wikipedia, Sensory branding is a type of marketing that appeals to all the senses in relation to the brand. It uses the senses to relate with customers on an emotional level. Brands can forge emotional associations in the customers’ minds by appealing to their senses. A multi-sensory brand experience generates certain beliefs, feelings, thoughts and opinions to create a brand image in the consumer’s mind.[1]
Sense: Any of the faculties, as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, by which humans and animals perceive stimuli originating from outside or inside the body.[2]
Sensory marketing: Marketing techniques that aim to seduce the consumer by using his senses to influence his feelings and behaviour.[3]
Sensory branding is used to relate to the customer in a more personal way than mass marketing. It is a technique that does what traditional forms of advertising cannot.[4] It is used in retail design, magazines, showrooms, trade-fair booths, service centres, and corporate headquarters.[5] A multi-sensory experience occurs when the customer is appealed to by two or more senses.
According to Rieunier (2002), the sensory marketing approach tries to fill in the deficiencies of the “traditional marketing” which is too rational. Classic marketing is based on the idea that the customer is rational, that his behaviour is broke up in defined reasoned steps, according to the offer, the competition, the answer to his needs…By contrast, sensory marketing put the experiences lived by the consumers and his feelings in the process. These experiences have sensorial, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and relational dimensions, not only functional. It aims to create the adequacy of the products with their design and their packaging, and then to valorise them in a commercial environment to make them attractive. There, the consumer is behaving according to his compulsions and emotions, more than his reason.[6]
Marketers mostly appeal to sight and sound.[7] 99% of all brand communication focuses on sight and sound. However in many instances, sound and smell are more effective than sight when branding a product or organisation. Also, visual images are more distinctive when matched with a second sense.[8]
The main use for sensory branding is to appeal to the consumer’s senses. It is also used to understand the emotions and experiences of the consumer when being drawn to, purchasing or using the product, penetrate and dominate market share, increase profitability and to ensure initial and repeat purchases.[4] Sensory branding is used to create an atmosphere that encourages the customer to pay money and can be influenced by sight, noise, touch, taste and smell.
Sensory marketing is defined as a way of: • measuring and explaining consumer emotions • spotting and capitalizing on new market opportunities • an opportunity to maximize product profitability • ensuring first and repeat purchase (loyalty) • ensuring long-lasting product success [9]
Sight is the most used sense for marketing because it is the one most responsive to the environment.[4] We can appreciate logos, corporate colors, characters and other graphical tools with which one can identify a specific product. According to fashion retailer Gina Tricot, ‘the eyes buy 70 or 80 percent of what people buy.’ Sight is how the customer knows the product offering, quality, changes, store layout, materials, lights and colours. Shapes and colour are the first aspects of a brand that is noticed by the customer.
Colour is a big influence on visual branding because it can affect people emotionally. According to the Seoul International Colour Expo, The colour of a brand logo improves brand recognition by 80%. And 84% of people believe that colour amounted to the major consideration when they choose a brand. Different colours affect people differently, for example, red ‘is the highest stimulation hue. It increases pulse and heart rate, raises blood pressure and stimulates appetite.’ This can be used by sensory branding in restaurants to stimulate hunger or in bars to because of its exciting properties.[10]
Sound is used in branding to evoke emotions and feelings to influence brand experiences and interpretations.[1] Perhaps the second most used variable by marketing and advertising is the sense of hearing. Sound when matched with a message is a powerful way to make the customer remember it. Background music is an effective way to influence customer behaviour at the point of purchase. If used properly, music can create a mood for the consumer that encourages them to buy, for example playing rock and roll music in a guitar store.
Smell is used in branding because it increases the customers’ remembrance of the brand.[1] The human nose can distinguish over 10,000 different odors, besides being the most sensitive of the senses; it has a tremendous evocative power of memories and experiences over the years. Smell is the sense most linked to our emotional recollection. It can create instant connections between a brand and other memories. Neuromarketing studies show that 75% of emotions are triggered by smell. Smell is linked to pleasure and wellbeing, emotion and memory. Therefore it can influence customers’ emotional state and mood to make the customers more susceptible to impact customer behaviour. Restaurants sometimes send artificial smells into the areas around the venue to increase awareness of their product.
Research by the Sense of Smell Institute indicates that while people’s visual recall of images sinks to approximately 50% after only three months, they recall smells with a 65% accuracy after an entire year. Similarly, a study carried out at the Rockefeller University shows that in the short term we remember just 1% of what we touch, 2% of what we hear, 5% of what we see, 15% of what we taste and 35% of what we smell.[11]
Taste fuses all the different senses together to create a holistic brand experience. Therefore name, presentation, environment, scent, sound and texture must all be considered when branding with taste. Taste is linked to emotional states, and so it can alter mood and brand perception. Gustative marketing is usually used (for obvious reasons) especially for food and beverage brands.
Touch strengthens brand identity and image by appealing to this sense. Touch considers physical and psychological interaction between the customer and the product. Touch is a way to control the ‘unconscious of the consumers, their perceptions, feelings and tastes’.[4] Touch can be manipulated through materials, weight, softness, and comfort of the product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_branding
According to Viora, the nose delivers 75 percent of a drinker’s taste experience of coffee and even more of the taste experience of tea. With the new lid, the actual drink opening sits beneath the nose, while the recessed well leaves some of the drink outside of the cup to release even more aroma. The lid even improves retronasal smelling, which occurs when aroma travels through the pharynx in the back of the mouth to the olfactory membrane. When drinkers purse their lips to suck through the small opening of a conventional lid, it closes the soft pallet and blocks the pharynx. With the Viora Lid, lips stay relaxed, and this problem is removed.
http://www.vioralid.com/
http://www.springwise.com/coffee-cup-lid-puts-pleasure-takeaway-coffee/
Human Nose Can Detect a Trillion Smells, according to a new study. Researchers had previously estimated that humans could sense only about 10,000 odours but the number had never been explicitly tested before.
“People have been talked into this idea that humans are bad at detecting smells,” says neurobiologist Leslie Vosshall of Rockefeller University in New York City
Humans detect smells by inhaling air that contains odour molecules, which then bind to receptors inside the nose, relaying messages to the brain. Most scents are composed of many odourants; a whiff of chocolate, for example, is made up of hundreds of different odor molecules. Understanding how people process the complex information contained in scents—or memories of smells—offers a window into how the human brain functions.
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