Marketers have a tendency to emphasize functional features and benefits when they assess brand health, and they tend to underrate the importance of the actual consumption experiences of their customers. They often look at the consumer as an entity that makes rational choices – with particular emphasis on the decision-making aspects of those choices.

But, people do not only make purchasing decisions based on a logical and rational understanding of a brand’s features and benefits. They also tap into primal motivators of behaviour using their experiences and senses, which often colours their connection with the brand.

What are the senses? The senses are fundamental to perception, which is why measuring the sensory connection is so important. The sensory connection defines how the consumer sees all aspects of the marketing effort, and is therefore a logical starting point in assessing a brand’s overall position in the market.

But, what are the senses? And, which senses do we include in the sensory connection between the brand and its consumer?

There is no definite agreement between neurologists to say exactly how many senses there are, and many different classifications of senses exist. Using the early class-ifications made by Rudolf Steiner and Albert Soesman, we have constructed a model of sensory connections that is suitable for describing how consumers connect with brands.

This model identifies four types of sensation, as detailed in the above diagram:

• Physical sensations: i.e. the commonly-known five senses
• Body sensations, which deal with feelings resulting from processes within the body e.g. hunger, which might be manifested in the form of “stomach growling or mouth watering in anticipation”.
• Mind sensations, which deal with the mental processes that accompany the consumption e.g. “takes my mind far away” or “reminds me of Christmas as a child”.
• Awareness sensations, which deal with the individual’s sense of being a separate, alive being, within in a spatial and temporal environment.

Indeed, it is the “touch-points” between the brand and the consumer that define the brand experience. What happens at these touch points, then, combine together to form a sensory connection between the brand and the consumer.

What is experiential marketing?

The examination of consumer experiences is known as experiential marketing. This is a field of marketing pioneered by Bernd Schmitt, whose thinking has been adapted in the approach detailed here.

The experiential marketing approach recognizes the fact that the consumer is not just an information processing machine that makes rational choices – instead the consumer is a sensing, feeling, thinking, and acting person.

There are some interesting analytical tools accompanying the examination of sensory connections:

Sensory Connection Grid

This forms the centre-piece of the sensory analysis, and is a device describing the relationship between the sensations (e.g. thoughts, feelings, sensations) and the elements that make up the brand itself (i.e. product, packaging, display, advertising).

Holistic Sensory Experience

The overall experiential impact of the brand is depicted in a simple statistic which combines all aspects to depict an coherent holistic sensory experience. This is compared with the holistic sensory experience provided by other brands in the category, to establish its competitive position.

Transformational Experiences

Transformational experiences are those experiences that have the greatest potential for positively influencing or changing the consumer’s view of the brand. These are identified during the course of examining the brand’s sensory connection.