Does Your Brand Make Any Sense? - It Should - - By Lance Winslow

[Lance Winslow]

By Lance Winslow

If you own a small business or work as a CBO - Chief Branding Officer for a major corporation you'll need to take your brand to a whole new level to survive in a world of massive marketing impressions overwhelming the consumer. Thus, I'd like to recommend a very good book to you:

"Brand Sense - Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound" by Martin Lindstrom; Simon and Schuster, New York, NY 2005.

Martin suggests that companies replace their old strategy of massive impressions and repetition with fewer impressions but hitting all the senses (sensory perception) to lock in the consumer's mind to your brand. When he talks about sense, he talks about dimensions of the five senses. Go from 2D of the print ads to 5D using all senses.

How can you use sound in your brand? Well, think of AT&T and the Microsoft startup sounds. There are all kinds of examples in this book on all the senses and every chapter is very well summarized so you can go back and review. This is perhaps a good book to leave on your business shelf.

Mr. Lindstrom asks a dubious question; what do you have left when you remove your logo? And asks the branding professional or reader if they can pass that test? Would the customer still recognize your product if you removed the logo? Think about that and you will have an insight into what many of the most successful brands are doing and why they are on top in the minds of the consumers.

How can you measure this on a graph? Martin uses a pentagram divided with triangles and then puts each of the five senses in each space. Take your brand and shade in which spaces you have conquered; sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.

How about branding a mood? Is it possible? Sure it is look at Disneyland and their magical experience, bringing fantasy to life! How about rituals? Like Campbell's Soup, you blow on it before eating. Martin says that emotional response = senses brought to mind X positive response X emotion. It's all about harmony + synergy as Martin would say. Please check out this book if you are serious about building a champion brand.


By Lance Winslow