Scenting Success

	It gives the impression that winning is far more common than losing as you can’t hear the sound of losing!

It’s well known that most marketing plans tend to appeal to just two senses – sight and hearing. However, to strengthen the impression a brand leaves on its clientele, some firms are trying to widen this. Welcome to the world of sensory marketing, which is about bombarding all our senses and activating them as much as possible. It’s also about making the financial transaction (in whatever commercial market) a more complete, rounded experience, encouraging you to seek more of that product.

Like memories, sensory perceptions are unique to each of us and have the capacity to emotionally stimulate, leaving the chance to build brands by leveraging the five senses wide open – though so far few firms have integrated their strategies to do this.

This is because not all media channels are able to connect with each of the five senses, and we really don’t know how to handle the phenomenon of total sensory appeal. More than 80% of information is received visually, but other senses offer new opportunities to engage the customer. Sensory marketeers believe the theory of exploiting the senses can be applied to all brands and markets.

Making sense of the marketing

Those markets include gambling. It’s claimed that sensory marketing provides a competitive advantage and has the capacity to make the unfamiliar seem familiar and appealing. Let’s take smell. Psychological research has shown that smell is probably the most impressionable and responsive of the five senses. Smells invoke memories and appeals directly to feelings without first being filtered and analysed by the brain. We all recognise and are emotionally stimulated by a wide variety of smells, such as the scent of freshly cut grass.

Some commercial operators have already got the hang of sensory appeal. For instance, some supermarkets bake fresh bread on the premises so passersby smell the aroma, are struck with hunger and are drawn inside. One major British bank introduced freshly brewed coffee to its branches with the intention of making customers feel at home. The familiar smell was used to help relax the customers. Other examples include a leading chain of toiletry stores which pumped the smell of chocolate through its air conditioning system in the run up to Valentine’s Day, and a well-known clothes shop which filled its flagship stores with the smell of freshly-laundered shirts.

But the direct use of smell in gambling environments has only recently been investigated experimentally. In one infamous case, researchers in Nevada examined the effect of ambient aromas on gambling behaviour. In a Las Vegas casino, slot machine areas were sprayed with pleasant but distinct aromas and the amount of money punters gambled was compared with areas left unsprayed. The study found that the amount of money gambled on the sprayed slot machines during the weekend of the experiment was significantly greater than the amount gambled in the same area during the weekends before and after the experiment. The increase was greatest on Saturday night when the concentration of the smell was at its highest. In short, pleasant smelling slot machines increased the casinos’ takings.

Let’s not forget hearing. Like smell, sound also evokes memory and emotion. Meaningful sound is a cheap but very effective way of appealing to another of a customer’s senses and of powerfully enhancing a brand’s message or appeal. A pop song from your youth can help bring back the excitement felt in your teens.

Sounding out the punters

Sound effects and noise in the gambling environment are very important in getting people to gamble. Sound effects – especially in activities like slot machine playing – are thought to be gambling-inducers. Constant noise and sound gives the impression of a noisy, fun and exciting environment. Walk into any casino in Las Vegas and you will experience this. It’s also common for slot machines to play a musical tune or buzz loudly if you win, with low denomination coins hitting a metal payout tray making lots of noise. This is all deliberate. It gives the impression that winning is far more common than losing (as you cannot hear the sound of losing!). So next time you’re in a room full of 1,000 slot machines, remember that the sound of 20 of them paying out is more audibly noticeable than the 980 machines that are losing money for the punter.

There are many directions in which casinos and other gambling environments may go along the sensory marketing route. They could introduce their own brand aroma, their own sound, and a different quality of light that could set a mood in accordance with each type of gambling (setting up ‘sensory landscapes’). The materials and the technology is already here to take punters into a different sort of experience in their chosen gambling environment.