The world’s top brands aim to become an irresistible driver for irrational consumer choices, based on scientific data that show how just 5% of purchasing decisions are based on rational elements, while an amazing 95% are based on wholly instinctive, unconscious processes.
Emotional marketing, also known as emotional branding, is a strategy that puts sensory perceptions and their emotional associations front and centre, to elevate the success of highly evolved communication and “persuasion” campaigns. But how exactly do emotional marketing triggers work? How is it connected with olfactory marketing, and with the sensory landscapes that Scent Company’s experts craft so adeptly?
Emotional marketing, engagement and memory
When we talk about emotional marketing, we’re talking about how the emotions can be harnessed in a subtle yet effective way, to creative positive brand experiences and drive specific responses, feelings or actions in the target audience. Unlike previous communication strategies that relied purely upon rational discourse to convince audiences, emotional marketing attempts to capture consumers’ attention by speaking to their emotional sphere.
We know that the brain processes external inputs using two different functional systems: one linked to the emotions, and the other to rational logic. The former is unconscious, rapid and wonderfully irrational, while the latter is slower, more analytical and less spontaneous.
The two systems work in synergy, but the first to be activated is the unconscious system. This is true even during purchasing decisions, when the brain must select products and evaluate the endless brands available on the market. Emotional marketing strategies are designed to target the irrational parts of the brain, to give the public emotional triggers that are simply impossible to ignore.
Thus, the entire concept of a brand goes beyond being a mere set of logical and descriptive features, as it steadily evolves into a mixture of feelings, memories, experiences and perceptions that are so fulfilling that they can persuade people to buy a product, attract customers into a store, build ironclad bonds between the brand and consumers, build loyalty or push existing customers to repeat the brand experience.
How does emotional marketing benefit brands?
What emotional branding aims to do is to build strong emotional connections between a brand and its target audience, based not simply on the company’s commercial offering, but rather on the whole set of sensations and values that it conveys.
When customers and brands connect through these aspects, their relationship tends to become stronger and more lasting, fostering loyalty over time. Emotional marketing campaigns, in particular, leave a lasting impression on audiences by being memorable and highlighting unique features that set them apart from competitors.
Being persuasive by sparking positive emotions is a great way to attract potential customers into the brand’s retail spaces and influence their decision-making. This helps boost KPIs such as customer dwell time, average transaction value or return rates.
Additionally, a consumer-company relationship based on an emotional connection stimulates deeper engagement in the public, inviting them to actively and enthusiastically take part in brand initiatives. This improves brand awareness, positively impacts brand identity and helps form a passionate community of customers, who all share the same values and are willing to become spokespeople for the brand.
Emotional Marketing: real-world examples of the magic in action
Businesses use multiple strategies to incorporate emotional marketing principles into their communication campaigns. A whole spectrum of emotions can be tapped into. These range from the search for gratification, to trust, competitiveness, a sense of belonging, the fear of missing out (FOMO), or shared values.
Before crafting marketing campaigns aimed at evoking certain emotions in customers, it’s crucial to thoroughly understand your audience. This deep understanding allows you to identify the precise emotional triggers you want to activate.
Once that step is completed, there are any number of ways to effectively communicate with the irrational side of the mind, and build relationships based on subliminal elements. One of the most successful methods used by brands is storytelling, in other words narrating stories with high emotional content to potential customers.
Emotional marketing campaigns are often built around the evocative power of words: language can provide various emotional inputs, in the form of figures of speech or trigger terms, for instance. These elicit immediate reactions in the reader, making them feel a connection (albeit only virtual) with objects, places, scenarios and settings.
Visual elements are, of course, another of the most powerful and impactful methods for stimulating positive emotional connections. Colours, design, font and so on can trigger powerful emotional associations, while making the brand immediately recognisable. Carefully chosen testimonials or brand ambassadors are also among the best strategies for eliciting an emotional response in your target audience, by harnessing the sentimental power of a community that shares the same vision, the same principles and the same emotional baggage.
Olfactory marketing is another element widely used in building an emotional brand identity. This is a sophisticated tactic to channel a brand’s essence into subtle, intangible elements that nevertheless have immediate subconscious associations for the customer. Smell is the most ancestral and direct of the five senses. It has the power to create exciting brand experiences based on an authentic dialogue at the subliminal level.
Our sense of smell is linked to the limbic area of the brain. It helps to shape our feelings, memories and emotional responses. As such, it offers a wealth of opportunities to anyone wishing to turn their brand into a story infused with invisible yet memorable sensations. Scent marketing, and olfactory branding in particular, makes it possible to identify a brand’s unique features and turn them into exclusive, personalised fragrances.
These can then be used to create olfactory “scentscapes” and inspire specific, subconscious reactions in customers or visitors to these scented spaces. This helps to reinforce brand identity to an extent that is simply impossible using other tools, while optimising relevant KPIs. Midway between neuroscience and the magical power of emotions, olfactory marketing is the most effective way to create captivating immersions in each brand’s unique essence.
Case studies of emotional marketing curated by Scent Company
Scent Company’s fragrance specialists are on a mission to enrich leading luxury brands with emotional nuance, so that they resonate with customers’ emotions. Their strategies include picking specific scent notes, or creating a unique scent logo, to help a brand express its personality as never before and achieve results that are quite remarkable.
Our scent marketing experts work with the best noses in the business. Together, we create distinctive olfactory signatures that can become powerful declarations of uniqueness, and an attractive, highly persuasive element to engage with a specific target market.
There are countless ways to utilize emotional marketing and olfactory marketing. For example, we can translate the character of a prestigious hotel into a custom-made olfactory signature, as we did for the Hotel Firefly in Zermatt. We designed a high-impact scented route to take guests through the different areas of the hotel, via the lounge, corridors, spa or suites.
We also enhanced the unique charm of AirBnB Niido, an elegant residential complex in Nashville: today, it welcomes residents and guests with a bespoke fragrance that we created for the entryway, as well as a line of complimentary scented items placed in every apartment.
Emotional responses are equally important in the F&B sector or in retail where, as in the case of the prestigious Hogan brand flagship stores, it contributes to stimulating customers’ purchasing choices, where it speaks to their senses and carries them on an exciting journey outside of time and space, into the brand itself for an exploration of its vibrant identity.
Olfactory marketing knows no boundaries—its possibilities are as endless as the imagination of the strategist and the expertise of the team tasked with employing state-of-the-art scent diffusion techniques to create immersive olfactory architectures.
Scent Company offers a full-service experience, guiding brands in the process from discovering their olfactory identity and understanding how it can be strategically diffused in their spaces, right through to the vital maintenance and refill operations for their chosen systems.
Are you ready to experiment with the power of emotional marketing and find the olfactory stimuli most aligned with your objectives? Contact us today and let’s start imagining your sensory identity together!
