Engaging All Five Senses

As a business or brand, it is essential to share your brand often with your community of customers. And through experiential marketing, brands have the opportunity to share in more tangible ways. At Chroma, we often communicate the impact of utilizing this tactic as it allows your community of customers to gain an emotional connection to your brand. Create “sticky impressions” that produce brand loyalty and increase the potential for sales. This goes far beyond traditional forms of communication, especially in today's digital age. In utilizing experiential marketing strategies, a brand can tell its story using all five senses, and we all know that written copy on a page or a computer screen can't do that. Here are some great ways to think through sharing your brand in the form of a live activation while engaging all five senses of your community of customers.

Touch 

A great way to engage your customer's sense of touch is to utilize tactile elements in your live activation. An example of this could be actual products that the customer can touch and test or a physical feature that communicates to your brain the way your brand physically feels. 

Smell 

This one may seem unusual during a live activation. Depending on how the scent is diffused, the use of aroma can be both an overwhelming or equally delightful experience. Give your customer an olfactory cue for your brand experience by utilizing a signature scent or fragrance in any area of the live activation.

Taste

Although this particular use of senses is the lowest hanging fruit for food and beverage companies, other brands can utilize the sense of taste during a live activation by serving complementary delights that involve the sense of taste. A great way to do this is by serving mixed beverages and small bites.

Sight

This sense is by far the most impactful when employing it during a live activation because most key components of live activations are what a customer sees. There is an array of implementations and visual elements that can be used, like creative installations, branded signage, and lighting applications.

Hearing 

Along with visuals, customers need to be able to recall pleasant sounds from the experience. This may trigger positive memories, even when not interacting with your product or service. It's simple to implement and can include playing upbeat music or ambient sounds. For added brand recognition, the use of spoken words can be used to emphasize certain messaging or a brand manifesto.

An honorable mention (which is technically not one of the five senses) that will impact the overall customer experience is the energy in the room. From a mile away, Customers can read whether or not a brand is authentically presenting itself and its product or service. So be sure to always create an experience that is truly definitive of your brand and brand story.