Building a brand experience that makes sense

We all need to be a little more Irene Cara in building brand experiences for our clients. For those who were not donning leg warmers and a welding mask in 1983 (a sartorial choice that literally no one saw coming), she belted out ‘What a Feeling’ to anyone who would listen (and those who watched Flashdance at their local Odeon).

Because making your clients feel something when they interact with your brand is what it’s all about. Think about the brands that you have in your life through choice (not the local Tesco, which at best is a decision based on convenience often made through gritted teeth). Most will elicit an emotion in you – you will feel something toward them.

It’s not just the big brands that need to create positive feelings. It can be one of the most effective ways of building customer retention, because those who feel tend to stick around longer (please don’t quote me out of context on that one).

How do you create those feelings? It can seem tricky for some small businesses, particularly those who are service-based, and often work virtually.

Start with some brand sense. Look at your most frequent or important touch points – the places where your customers (and prospects) interact with your business. These can be physical or digital moments. Look at them through my Brand Sensations framework and get creative about redesigning the touch points to heighten what your customers feel.

What they see.

Your visual identify will be doing all the heavy lifting with this one. You will have touch points scattered across the digital landscape, so a consistent, stand-out brand is essential. Look at Oatly – their rebrand was all about connecting more deeply with their audience, using a handcrafted aesthetic, a splash of custom typefaces and even having the audacity to split their brand name across two lines on their cartons.

And Innocent’s use of micro-copy (a device also used by Oatly) is all about creating an experience for their customers. Suddenly discovering a cheeky line of copy on the bottom of their carton provokes a moment of glee and the feeling you’re in the insider’s club.

How can you get playful or unexpected with your brand identity to give your customers a moment of joy, intrigue or discovery?

What they touch.

Any business that has packaging or a physical product wins here – it is simple to create an experience with the use of the right materials, design and interaction. But what if you’re an online service business?

Think about how you can create a physical interaction, because getting your brand into your customers’ hands in some way will create a winning experience. Well thought-out branded merch can be a brilliant way to bring your business to life.

The Allotment is mainly a virtual business, but I send out actual Allotment maps to project clients so they can navigate to the services they most want next. The virtual Allotment becomes a reality in their hands; something they can touch and feel.

What they hear.

Or sonic branding, if you’re wearing your fancy pants.

Of course, the big brands are all over creating auditory experiences to create a more meaningful, memorable moment. Think Netflix’s ‘ta-dum’ - you can find out what two household objects knocking together the sound is based on here. Or Heck’s “sonification of its ethos” - which is sound-agency speak for sausage anthem, I guess, which you can delight your ears with whilst learning the dance moves too.

But smaller brands can lean into the power of snagging your customers’ ears. You might not have the budget for original composition, but licensed intro music that plays at the start of every client session, or video recording, or even a sonic motif that starts your client sessions , can help create a unique experience that is richer, because more senses are in play.

And if you are a creative business, music is definitely an experience to consider – you can read more about it here in one of the Allotment’s previous blogs.

What sound should your business be making to connect deeper with your customers?

What they smell.

If you want to sniff out one of the most powerful ways to create connection with your customers, don’t turn your nose up at creating a brand smell. Get it right and customers will be able to recognise your brand with their eyes shut – and how’s that for brand memory?

Now for the poorly summarised science bit: smell does directly to the brain’s limbic system, with is the emotional control centre – so smell is one of the most effective senses to activate to trigger emotion.

So many brands use smell as part of building a unique experience, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, which pumps their signature scent into stores. Starbucks outlet in St Pancreas, not content with the inevitable whiff of coffee, pumps the smell of brown sugar syrup into the space to tickle the nose (and taste buds) of customers.

But you don’t need a retail space to make your business smell good – think about what you want your business to smell like. Lemon, for fresh thinking? Leather, for quality? Get creative about how you can send this scent to your customer’s noses – an aroma welcome postcard? A scratch and sniff invite?

What they taste.

Putting aside businesses that make edible things, can taste be part of creating a brand experience that helps your customers feel something?

Not many non-food or drinks brand have got brand taste as part of their experience, but perhaps we can take inspiration from Taste Film, who invite customers not just to watch films, but savour them.

A brand experience that has stuck with me for probably 15 years is from Firebox.com, an online store that sells gifts and gadgets. In the box that my order came in was a cheeky pack of free Haribo. Fun, frivolous and an unexpected treat, that little bag of sweets amplified my experience with that brand (how they hell do I still remember it after all these years? Probably because it was totally unexpected) and reinforced their brand vibe.

What taste should your brand evoke? And how can you get it to the lips of your customers?

Creating brand experience is something that all businesses of any size should think about. Appealing to multiple senses just makes so much sense when it come to building experiences and brand memories for your customers.

If you want a creative approach to building customer experiences, why not book in for a Seed Sower session and we can work for an hour exploring creative ways to build better, stand out experiences that help you connect deeper and longer with your customers. Email me and let’s help you make sense of it all!