Sensory Marketing: Mental Stimulation in Display Ads

Today we’re going to take a closer look at sensory marketing. Now, sensory marketing is nothing new, it’s been around for decades. But it’s gaining a lot of buzz again, and it’s worth reflecting on if you haven’t studied the concept. So, in a nutshell, sensory marketing is about engaging the senses of a consumer to impact their perception of your brand and then influence their behavior. Now, we tend to do this intuitively as marketers. We pick imagery that characterizes the brand with subtle hints to it.

Say it’s a luxury product or a high-quality service. It often goes unnoticed to the consumer, as that sensory impact is typically subtle and almost subconscious. Try this with me. Close your eyes for a second and think about the sound of an Expo whiteboard marker as you write. Is there a characteristic squeak that you hear in your mind? Now, what about a Sharpie writing on a piece of paper? Does your mind jump to the soft but scratchy noise? Those audio cues came about in lots of advertisements that you were likely exposed to.

Over time, you’ve intensified your perception of a brand because of that sensory connection.You likely don’t pick up on that specific Sharpie sound, but it’s there. This holds true in simpler forms of marketing as well. Take display or social media advertising. Have you considered taking advantage of sense-based marketing? Now, we don’t have enough time to go through all the avenues of sensory marketing, but I’ll share with you an example so you can better analyze your visual ads. Have you ever thoughts about the actual position of a product in your advertisement? Say, if someone is holding something in their left hand versus their right hand,would it affect how a viewer imagines using that product? Well a study by Elder and Krishna published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that changing a product’s visual depiction leads viewers to imagine interacting with that product and can, thereby, increase purchase intention.

 

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So, let’s look at an example of what this means. So, here we have two ad concepts. The left shows the spoon on the left and the right shows the spoon on the right. Any ideas on whether or not this minute change would impact the engagement on these ads? Well, the study showed that a match between handedness and product orientation mattered. So a right-handed person viewing a picture of a bowl of cereal with a spoon on the right versus a mismatch increases the mental stimulation of product interaction.

So, in other words, a right-handed person is less likely to engage with an advertisement when the spoon is on the left. They will be more likely to engage with a spoon that is on the right. This is a very simple, yet powerful demonstration on how object orientation works in sensory marketing and how a person’s mind subconsciously tries to interact with the object. If they can visualize themselves using it, I’m right handed and therefore I will hold the spoon in my right hand, they’re more mentally stimulated. And the more mentally stimulated, the higher their purchase intent.

So as you go out to build your next display ads, come up with a few A, B experiments of your own that play on the idea of sensory marketing.

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