By R. Larsson, Advertising Week
In today’s digital-first world, we’re constantly bombarded with visual content – scrolling, swiping and streaming our way into a state of screen fatigue. The result? A shallow, overstimulated experience that lacks emotional resonance and depth.
Enter sensory marketing: a powerful, often underused strategy that taps into sound, scent, taste, and touch to create immersive brand experiences. By engaging more than just the eyes, brands can reignite customer connection, foster loyalty and stand out in a visually saturated landscape.
We spoke with industry experts to explore how sensory marketing can breathe new life into customer interactions. They break down what it is, showcase brands that are doing it right and reveal how it’s reshaping the customer-brand relationship in our screen-dominated era.
Kristy Elisano, CMO, Sparks
In a screen-dominated world, sensory marketing offers brands a way to move beyond the scroll—and into real emotional connection. When you engage more than just the eyes, through sound, touch, scent, even taste, you move from storytelling to storyliving. That’s when brand experiences become lasting memories. Sensory marketing is at the heart of experiential—bringing brand values to life through immersive, multi-sensory moments that audiences can actually feel.
At Copa América, Michelob ULTRA created a full-spectrum brand experience designed to resonate with a passionate, multicultural audience. From pitchside 1v1s and soccer-inspired games to cold ULTRAs served from custom bars, a 360º trophy photo op, and a rooftop dance party, every detail tapped into the senses. Fans could feel the energy, hear the music, touch the product, and live the brand. This is what experiential marketing does best. It transforms brand moments into something immersive and authentic—something that sticks. In this case, ULTRA wasn’t just associated with soccer—it became part of the fan experience itself. Sensory marketing rebalances the customer-brand relationship. It shifts people from passive viewers to active participants. And in a world of visual fatigue, that shift is where real connection—and loyalty—is built.
Vicky Bullen, CEO Coley Porter Bell
Let’s face it. Spending our lives on screens leads to brain fatigue, accompanied by a visual fog that makes most brands meld into a sea of sameness. Banner ads make no impression. Online shops are indistinguishable from each other. Deep connections do not come naturally in the digital world, which is where sensory marketing and other forms of immersive branding offer a needed respite and an opportunity for brands.
Many beauty brands have recognised the strength of sensory marketing. Glossier and Rhode Skincare have incorporated carefully curated immersive experiences in their stores. Using the power of taste, touch and sound, they have created a truly sensual experience which has immersed their customers in the brand and its products.
Beauty brands are not alone in these experiences. Magnum is a master at this. By building the distinctive ‘crack’ into their brand – from their comms to their pack experience, they have made that sound their own. A genius touch that adds a more physical, emotive dimension to the product that is not replicable purely with digital marketing.
Sensory marketing works because it bypasses our rational thought processes and goes to our subconscious, engaging the emotional centers, creating stronger connections. And in doing so, it makes brands more memorable, more distinctive and more real.
Yasmin Schaab, Strategist, Saffron Brand Consultants
As our most emotionally evocative sense, scent is a powerful tool for brands to connect with customers and become more memorable. It can instantly transport us back to specific moments and reinvoke how we felt at that time.
Post-COVID, we have started to really appreciate our sense of smell and consumers today are seeking real-life experiences more than ever. Scent is a key sensory tool for these immersive experiences, as it cannot be replicated digitally (yet).
Scent branding was once a niche practice, mainly used by travel and retail brands through methods like scenting plane cabins or selling hotel-branded candles. In recent years, it has evolved into more sophisticated applications. Car brands are now integrating scent-dispersing technology into vehicles, while fashion houses are creating signature fashion week fragrances and using scent-based gifts to help audiences recall key brand moments.
The opportunities are vast, especially when compared to traditional visual branding. People can distinguish around 10,000 different scents but only 200 colours. We also remember scents up to seven times better than anything we saw, touched, tasted or heard. By engaging customers’ noses, brands can cut through the visual noise and create lasting connections with their customers.
Esther Scriven, Creative Strategist, Imagination
As someone who works at an agency whose core purpose is in the name – Imagination – I have been recently reflecting on what fuels and inspires creativity in a digital world and visual overload. Growing up, I was surrounded by books. They weren’t just words on a page, but portals into different worlds that gave space for my imagination to run wild, and they played a foundational role in my love of world-building and crafting experiences.
Experiential marketing is built on the truth that engaging multiple senses increases memorability, deepens emotional connection, and builds brand loyalty. But what really cuts through today’s overload of visual stimuli is when brands go further, putting audiences and their needs at the heart of the idea creation.
An excellent example of this is Penguin Random House’s Living Stories app. Syncing bedtime reading with smart home devices to create an immersive experience of light and sound, it’s a thoughtful response to a societal need, helping children rediscover the magic of literature in a digital world. This is where sensory marketing truly shines: not just by stimulating the senses, but by serving them.
