When you hear the word “banana”, are you able to “smell” it? Or by merely reading the word, do you picture a certain colour?
If your answer was yes to any of these questions then, you might be experiencing synesthesia. Synesthesia could be simply defined as the “crossing of the senses”. It occurs when the activation of a specific sense upon being exposed to a stimulus leads to the activation of another unrelated sense at the same time.
Synesthesia affects 3 – 5% of the population. This could be one of the reasons why marketers resort to it in their ads and in their marketing efforts.
Fun Fact: Famous singer, Billie Eilish, has synesthesia. In her case, she can visualise her own music!
In a world full of clutter, it became more difficult for marketers to grab the attention of their audience and to stand out from the others. However, the application of synesthesia in their ads could help them tackle such problem and cut through the noise.
Add to that, synesthesia can also help increase brand associations. It’s one of the reasons behind people associating Tiffany’s Jewellery shade of blue with luxury.
Synesthesia allows marketers to appeal to their audience different senses upon exposure to a specific ad. This, in turn, affects their perceptual process and makes them focus their attention towards it even more. It will also allow the audience to visualise the message and to grasp its meaning easily.
By having consumers experience synesthesia strategically, it’ll definitely make the whole brand experience more memorable and allow the brand to avoid habituation in its advertising.
Habituation occurs when an ad or a stimulus gets repeated too often resulting in a decrease or a lack of responses. The ad might appear too similar to others and have the audience lose their attention in a second.
In advertising, it is important to manage the absolute threshold of intensity which is the minimal amount of intensity needed to grab the consumers’ attention. The exposure to millions of ads per day created a need for higher thresholds to grab attention.
This also adds to the importance of applying synesthesia in an ad. Achieving higher stimulus intensity and higher thresholds could be done through synesthesia. It could give advertisers the ability to manage thresholds and the intensity of the stimulus or the ad.
One company that managed to apply synesthesia in its ads effectively is Coca-Cola. Recently, it created a very iconic, simple yet powerful #TasteTheFeeling ad campaign which leveraged synesthesia to make its brand more concrete.
By merely looking at this pic, you can’t help but to hear the sound of a Coca bottle opening and to imagine its taste, and that’s a sense of synesthesia for you.
The taste, smell, and look of Coca-Cola had been widely communicated worldwide. By seeing the soda bubbles effervescence inside the glass, it will certainly trigger memories of the sound of a Coke being poured into a glass. What added to its effect is the “try not to hear this” title which worked in a form of reverse psychology.
Perhaps, what helped Coca Cola achieve its goals is the fact that they have communicated the “feeling” of tasting a Coca-Cola across all of their marketing campaigns over the past years. The sound of opening a Coke or pouring one into a glass could be found in all of its ads. This made it easier for consumers to visualise such sounds effortlessly.
You can check out their ad below:
This campaign allowed Coca-Cola to leverage synesthesia to make the stimulus of their ads more intense. It certainly grabbed the attention of the audience and made them “taste” the feeling. Most importantly, these ads got Coca-Cola 86 million impressions and got people talking about it across four European markets in the first two months only.
Although it has become way harder for advertisers to cut through the noise, it had certainly made them come up with new and creative ways to grab the audience attention.
Synesthesia could be applied in a form of multi-sensory marketing to make the ads more powerful. However, it needs to be done strategically and with relevance to the brand involved so that it doesn’t harm it or cause any confusion in the process.
BBB- Buyer's Black Box 