At the end
of January the popular chocolate company Thorntons launched a campaign to get
the public trying out their new Continental collection.
The company
have just begun the re-launch of a chocolate collection, the Continental
Collection, which includes five new flavours for people to try. Thorntons took
this opportunity to create a sensory experiential marketing approach which was
a Taste Pod situated in Thornton in London’s Westfield Stratford store.
The taste
pod is aimed to identify which of the Continental range is perfect for you, the
consumer! (And obviously promote the new product). All you had to do was come
inside the taste pod, sit in a comfy chair, and take part in a tasting session
to find out your ideal balance of flavours to identify which chocolate is best
for you. At the end of the experience the consumer was given a sample product
of the chocolate that was most suited to them, which could be consumed either
in the taste pod or taken away.
This
experience for consumers is considered as a multi-sensory brand experience as
there are more than one of the five senses being used in this campaign (Hulten
et al, 2009). The experience has our sense of sight, sound, smell, touch and
taste all being used.
The main
sense being used is the sense of taste as it is the most important to this
campaign as it is all about finding out what taste is best for the consumer, whether
it is salty, sweet, or bitter.
The sense of
taste is said to be the “the most distinct emotional sense and often interacts
with other sense” (Hultén, 2011) which is why it is important to involve this
sense in experiential marketing as it will create value towards the product for
the consumer and will also enhance the brand image value. Taste is also
considered to relate to smells, feels and sounds, not just the flavours (Hultén,
2011), which is important when relating to the consumer’s experience due to the
larger the range of senses that are used in a campaign the stronger memory will
be created.
As well as
the sense of taste, the pod features ambient lighting, music and scents to add
to the sensory experience. Hultén (2011) discusses that the sense of sight is
most powerful when it comes to identifying new goods or service or changes in
these and is the most common sense for perceiving these. He goes on to further
discuss that the sense of sound and smell are both used to create emotionally
links between experiences and the consumers and are a strong method of creating
memories.
This
campaign uses these senses is taking the consumer on a ‘taste journey’ to find
what is best for them and giving the consumer an experience and a memory. All
of the sensory experiences are shaped around the consumer and their preferences
and in the end they receive a free gift, all of this creates strong image
resulting in the company gaining positive brand image for the future.
References
Hulten, B., Broweus, N. and van
Dijk, M. (2009). Sensory Marketing,
Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke.
Hultén, B.
(2011). Sensory marketing: the
multi‐sensory brand‐experience concept. European Business Review, 23(3),
256-273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09555341111130245
Great blog Shirley, really interesting. I love how the campaign incorporates all of the senses and makes them work together. This will definitely create a more memorable experience as it is new and never been done before. This technique could maybe make chocolate taste even better!
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