The markets, today, have far many brands in each product category than ever before. The number of brands is much more than what consumers can comprehend and compare. This, very often, creates chaos and confusion. In order to remain visible and relevant to consumers among the clutter of alternatives, one must innovate something that is basic and simple, and yet appeals to consumers on an ordinary and everyday basis. Sensory branding is a subtle, pleasant and innocuous way of creating a compelling brand experience in a competitive market, where conventional advertising, by itself, fails to create a distinct identity for one's brand.

In today's highly competitive global environment, companies, on a constant basis, have to find new ways to position their brands in consumers' minds. No amount of advertising and sales promotions can do any good if a brand does not confer a distinctive benefit. Brands need to be geared up to provide a complete package of functional, sensory and emotional experiences. Touching and triggering all the five senses of the consumers - touch, smell, sight, sound and taste - creates a compelling brand experience. The more multi-sensory appeal that a brand has, the higher is the number of sensory triggers activated and resultantly, higher the bonding between the brand and the consumer.

Sensory branding attempts to foster a lasting emotional connect between the brand and the consumer, using a deliberate design and deployment of interaction with the senses. We all have our values, feeling and emotions stored in our brains. These are the link to our memories, which are tapped right through our emotions. In brand communication, all the five senses need to be evoked to create optimum impact on the consumer. But, unfortunately, most advertising campaigns and other forms of marketing communications confine themselves to just the two senses of sight and sound, with the other three senses, especially smell, being largely ignored. Research by Brand Sense indicates that 75% of our emotions are actually triggered by what we smell. This is, therefore, a lacuna that the current day marketing communication needs to address.

The book, Brand Sense by Martin Lindstrom reveals a correlation between the number of senses that a brand appeals to and its price. Lindstrom introduced the term "trade dress", which refers to how a brand sounds, feels, tastes, shapes and smells. The more senses a brand can appeal to, the better it is, because of the pleasant and subtle appeal of sensory branding in enticing customers without their being conscious of it.

Marketing Mastermind Magazine, Sensory Branding, Global Environment, Marketing Communication, Advertising Campaigns, Advertising Promotions, Brand Commoditization, Brand Associations, Emotional Bonds, Services Industry, Telecom Companies, Decision-Making Process, Marketing Campaigns.