Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound

In perhaps the most creative and authoritative book on sensory branding ever written, international business legend Martin Lindstrom reveals what the world’s most successful branding companies do differently—integrating touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound—with startling and measurable results.

Based on the largest study ever conducted on how our five senses affect the creation of brands, BRAND sense explains Martin Lindstrom’s innovative six-step program for bringing brand building into the twenty-first century. The study, covering over a dozen countries worldwide, was conducted exclusively for this book by Millward Brown, one of the largest business research institutions in the world. Drawing on countless examples of both product creation and retail experience, Lindstrom shows how to establish a marketing approach that appeals to all the senses, not simply the conventional reliance on sight and sound. Research shows that a full 75 percent of our emotions are in fact generated by what we smell, and the author explains how to capitalize on that insight. Included are innovative tools for evaluating a brand’s place on the sensory scale, analyzing its future sensory potential, and enhancing its appeal to reach the broadest base of consumers. Lindstrom lists the top twenty brands for the future based on their sensory awareness. (The top three? Singapore Airlines, Apple, and Disney.)
Among the book’s many fascinating factual highlights are the

-That gratifying new-car smell that accompanies the purchase of a new car is actually a factory-installed aerosol can containing “new-car” aroma.

-Kellogg’s trademarked crunchy sound and feel of eating cornflakes was created in sound labs and patented in the same way that the company owns its recipe and logo.

-Singapore Airlines has patented a scent that is part of every female flight attendant’s perfume, as well as blended into the hot towels served before takeoff, and which generally permeates their entire fleet of airplanes.

-Starbucks’ sensory uniqueness is far less strongly associated with the smell and taste of coffee than with the interior design of its cafés and its green and white logo.

Hailed as the “World’s Brand Futurist” by the BBC, Martin Lindstrom is one of the world’s top entrepreneurial visionaries, who has changed the face of global marketing with twenty years of hands-on experience as an advertising CEO and adviser to Fortune 500 companies. Firmly steeped in scientific evidence and featuring sensory secrets of the most successful brand names, BRAND sense reveals how to transform marketing strategies into positive business results that no brand builder can afford to ignore.