Sensing change: How and why brand design is set to become multisensorial
Visual assets still dominate brand design, with sound, taste, touch and smell often just a cursory afterthought. If harnessing the four forgotten senses leads to greater brand salience, are companies wasting a huge opportunity to connect intimately with audiences? Jack Cousins explores the brands that are catching on.
At a distance, the John Lewis & Partners in Horsham, southern England might be indistinguishable from any of its other 33 department stores up and down the UK. But get a little closer and you’ll find an enticing, sleek space that was recently the subject of a multi-million-pound makeover. The ambitious move might well reflect the beginnings of a revolutionary shift in how the iconic brand wants to interact with its audience.
Upon entering the store, you are greeted by a deluge of activity that plays on the senses. The large 47,000-square-foot space has clearly been divided up into areas – almost like different biomes – with bold pastel colours adorning much of its two storeys. Past the nature-infused garden section and beyond the beauty booths, which disperse pleasant aromas to those wandering through, you will find the ground floor’s main music speaker concealed within a small, spherical fashion zone for women.
Inside, loud yet relaxing downtempo music is combined with a modern décor, teal hue and bright screens, complementing the fashion brand featured, Vivere By Savannah Miller. From the outside, however, the music is softer and gently fades the further you move away. Interestingly, sections selling other clothes brands not 20 feet away, like Levi’s and Barbour, pump out faster synth music from speakers hovering above a cantaloupe-coloured backdrop, creating a different environment to peruse in. At semi-regular intervals, pleasant smells permeate the air. Welcoming and subtle, they can be slightly hard to delineate but often have a distinguishably fruity aroma and seem to appear when entering new areas.
Suddenly, the serenity is punctured by a bawling baby, who acts as a vivid reminder that the whole space was meticulously curated to evoke specific feelings, and this becomes particularly apparent when the mood is breached.
The store of the future?
The department store was redesigned through a multisensorial lens, a form of branding which plays on the senses beyond the mere visual alone. The agency responsible for these unusual design elements, Sensory Experiences, was tasked in 2022 with reinventing the brand’s in-store experience and creating an environment that could compete with the rampant success of e-commerce. The multisensory research and design lab specialises in bringing together different ‘sensory modalities’ (the five senses) to improve brand perception and experience.
Its founder, Russell Jones, recalls, “The general idea was the store of the future. Fundamentally the brief was to approach the store environment from a sensory point of view to make it more engaging, highlight the products and make it a more inviting and just fun place to go.” While John Lewis was keen for its Horsham store to incorporate exciting, stimulating sensorial elements, Sensory Experiences also understood the importance of forging an environment that was accessible and inclusive to those with neurodivergent sensitivities. In other words, it required a subtle hand while also being impactful.
To create a truly powerful brand environment and reach superadditivity – a scientific insight that suggests a multisensory brand is more powerful than its unisensory parts – Jones believes it is crucial to ensure all the sensory inputs are aligned. His agency has incorporated a sophisticated form of strategy into its design process to help with this called Sensory Prescriptions®, which aims to deliver a competitive difference. A form of brand guidelines merged with neuroscience, it acts as a focal point, anchoring the design to key words that then inform an experience’s sensorial configuration.
Sensory Experiences then worked out precisely the emotions it wanted to elicit and heighten throughout the entire store before designing in-house the various soundscapes and scents that would be implemented.
Jones explains, “In the fashion department, you want people to feel upbeat, fresh, zingy, so it smells of grapefruit. There are many reasons why that was chosen, but one of them, which is really cool, is that people judge themselves as more attractive in a mirror when there's a citrus scent in the air, as opposed to other scents like vanilla.”
He adds, “The playlist had to be congruent [with the scent] and always light and zesty, meaning pop music was chosen very specifically to match.”
Harder floors were also deployed here based on the insight that people – especially women – judge themselves as thinner when walking on concrete due to it making higher pitched sounds. Elsewhere, brand areas disseminate smells of cucumber with freshly cut grass to help break down barriers and increase trust, plants are placed around the store liberally to lower anxiety, and lighting illusions in the living area mimic the trickling of water to slow shoppers down.
But are these complicated designs, which some would consider to be expensive add-ons, worth it? In the case of John Lewis & Partners Horsham, apparently so. Jones reports improvements to crucial store metrics including dwell time, sales and staff interaction levels. Positive about the brand’s future thanks to its new experience identity, Jones is also bullish about the necessity for brands to think outside the box in modern times.
He says, “Brands have to do [multisensory design] now with the oncoming of immersive media, and it must be developed for all the new channels that are opening up by creating greater experiences. They have to flip now into becoming more immersive brands, and that intrinsically means engaging all the senses and having sensorial brand assets. They cannot just believe their visual identity or logo are their brand anymore.”
What the data says
This is a view shared by Steve Keller, a sonic strategy director at SiriusXM’s in-house creative agency Studio Resonate in the US. In combining his passions for psychology, music and marketing, Keller has undertaken peer reviewed research specifically in the field of sonic branding with Charles Spence, Oxford University’s esteemed experimental psychologist.
One piece of Ipsos research the pair cited in a recent article for academic journal Psychology & Marketing demonstrated the power of brands that can incorporate multisensory assets – specifically audio – into their identities. The 2020 study selected over 2,000 pieces of video creative from the US and analysed them based on the forms of creative assets used. While over 90% of those adverts selected incorporated a branded visual identity (logo, colour, slogan etc.), just 8% utilised distinctive audio branded assets. But it was the sheer effectiveness of audio branding that interested Keller.
He explains, “They found that the visual assets definitely worked in bringing a brand top of mind. Interestingly, logos were least effective, while characters were most effective. But sonic assets outperformed visual assets almost three to one. Additionally, brands that used a sonic logo in their advertising were almost eight-and-a-half times more likely to produce brand salience.”
If this study is anything to go by, there clearly exists a discrepancy between what marketers believe to be effective to garner attention and what actually works. Of course, this is by no means to say Keller believes brands should only focus on audio design. However, like Jones, he thinks a harmony – or congruency – should exist between a brand’s various multisensory guises and that these should be deployed consistently to facilitate a sense of familiarity and trust.
“Our brain is looking to make things fit,” Keller explains. “The more aligned multiple senses are with that fit, the more powerful the perception. If a brand is thinking about a sonic identity, it should also think about the brand colours, typography and fonts that are being used. The more senses you can utilise and the more you can align them, the more impactful the experience is going to be.”
While Keller believes the UK is at the forefront of multisensory design – and the work of Sensory Experiences might well testify to that – there are also interesting examples currently prevailing in the US, too. Take Mastercard, which in 2019 launched Priceless, a flagship restaurant experience that immersed its cardholders within world-renowned eateries in Tribeca, New York City.
The three culinary destinations – Tanzanian seafood restaurant The Rock, British cocktail bar Lyaness and Japanese sushi bar Teruzushi – were selected to help Mastercard generate culinary adventures. To connect with people on an emotional level, the financial services brand brought to life the unique look and feel of each outlet, paying close attention to their sensory elements. This included a ‘bespoke sonic branding concept’ of the locales that then cleverly weaved in Mastercard’s own sonic identity.
As Keller reminds us, restaurants are “prime laboratories for multisensory experiences,” so it’s no surprise brands experiment with these kinds of environments. The audio experience can then be matched with the food or drink’s flavours to further enhance the taste in a process known as ‘sonic seasoning’. The activity serves as a way of putting an audience in a receptive frame of mind, which can then benefit companies that intermingle this positivity with its brand identity.
Keller attributes Mastercard’s multisensory curiosity to CMO Raja Rajamannar, who he has identified as a very vocal proponent of sensory marketing. However, while Rajamannar’s efforts of commercialising taste, sound and flavour are welcomed by Keller, he feels these sorts of one-off activations still have gimmicky elements to them. He envisions a future where brands move away from these isolated environments and become pronounced through many more touchpoints. With some large design agencies starting to listen to the likes of Keller and respect the power of multisensory, that might not take too long to come to pass.
Sound and vision
Take WPP-owned global brand specialists Landor, for instance. The agency has acquired a number of companies in recent times, including the likes of sonic branders amp, architecture designers BDG and experience design company Deeplocal, to bolster its ability to deliver high-quality, immersive brand experiences.
Landor’s global chief creative officer, Teemu Suviala, explains, “We've entered a time where brands need to be connecting with consumers and their audiences in many different ways. From my background at Meta, I know where a lot of the technology innovations are going in the next five to ten years. We need to think beyond visual and how AR – together with AI – will generate new ways for people to interact with each other. You can do that as a brand through visuals and motion, but also sound, haptics and eventually smell as well.”
Landor’s interest in the world of multisensory design has started to be reflected in its work. One of its most recent projects, for the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano (Milan Symphony Orchestra), sought to craft a rebrand heavily focussed on the idea of synaesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon that evokes sensory crossovers. For example, seeing sounds or tasting colours.
With sound itself being such an inherently important part of the brand, Landor decided to find a way to visualise it, hence turning the orchestral music into something more tangible and celebrated within the brand story. This was achieved through Tumb Tumb, a bespoke typeface that reacts to music being played. The logo also engages in a similar role, widening and narrowing based on the intensity of sounds heard and creating a more immersive experience for the audience.
“It's made for the digital era,” insists Suviala, “and it's a manifestation of where brands can go. I know we're scratching the surface with this project but it's on the right path and has set them up for success in the future. What's important for brands is that they have assets that can flex and turn into other things when the culture changes and be creatively reactive in the world.”
With multisensory design still not yet a mainstream practice, it might be plausible that designers at agencies like Landor struggle to think on a wavelength suitable to produce truly immersive outcomes. Suviala is adamant this is not the case and that even junior designers who come to the agency are able to conceptualise brands in a multisensorial way. Instead, it’s often the clients whose knowledge on the topic is more limited, but he believes progress is being made.
Suviala adds, “We're seeing so much more interest in this space, and we need to take note when innovation and technologies emerge. It's like surfing. When the wave comes in, you just have to lean in, otherwise you'll fall. And now the wave is multisensorial.”
Multisensory brand design clearly has the potential to unlock brands at their very core and connect them with audiences in novel and unexpected ways. However, it’s still an emerging form of branding that isn’t yet fully understood. With more and more brands trying to harness its power, there comes risks of failure, perhaps most obviously manifested through summoning unintended feelings. Designers had best beware of this.
Keller concludes, “As marketers, we like to believe that we're controlling what the brand is, but ultimately the brand isn't what I tell you it is. It's what you perceive it to be. Yes, we can stack the deck by leaning into the science and blending that with the art and design of brands and experiences, but we need to be aware that branding is essentially a process of alignment. It's aligning brand intent with consumer perception. And when you do that well you have a successful brand, but when you don't then it's really hard to move the needle.”
This article was taken from Transform magazine Q3, 2024. You can subscribe to the print edition here.
