The human body has five major senses - smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing, and touching - which team together to gather from the world around us. And marketers are getting very innovative in the ways they tap into these senses to make lots of cents!

Smelling…

For some products - like perfume - it makes sense to go the “scratch ‘n smell” route. But perhaps one of the more innovative ”scratch ‘n smell” ads I’ve seen is one from Canadian Tire. It was in a recent issue of some house and home type magazine saying that summer is just around the corner….is it time to think about a new lawn mower? Anyhow, to remind us of summer, this ”scratch ‘n small” ad featured the smell of freshly cut grass. Rather genious I thought. And I’ve told a lot of people about it. So it was effective.

Tasting… 

As for “peel ‘n taste”, I’ve never actually experienced this one. However I did read a story called “Making Sense of Sensory Marketing” on retailtouchpoints.com. In this article is a lickable ad campaign released by Welch’s. Yup, in a Feb issue of People magazine, readers were told: “For a tasty fact, remove & lick”. And then with the one lickable strip, willing enthusiasts got a quick taste of  the grape-flavored beverage. Since you can’t easily attach bottles to a magazine, this lickable strip appears to be an excellent alternative. I think it’s got a lot of potential and I’m sure we’ll see lots more of these in the future.

Touching…

For marketers using the sense of touch to sell things, I really think of offline stores where you can reach inside the packaging through strategic little punch-outs and touch/feel the softness…Scotties is one brand that really leverages ’softness’ as a selling point. They do a good job really.

Seeing and Hearing…

This is where the “click ‘n hmmm” stuff comes in - click and watch, click and listen, etc. The internet is doing a fab job with video and sound and people are totally loving it! Just look at the success of youtube!

But what’s around the corner? Will the internet go beyond sight and sound? I bet it will. What do you think? And what’s the smell coming from your computer?

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