The overall effects of branding campaigns are steadily declining as the cost of reaching consumers in a world cluttered with messages is on the rise. It is a frenzied world indeed. Every year there are several thousand new brands on store shelves that need to be introduced to consumers. Marketers are currently facing an enormous challenges just whipping up the necessary attention required to build these brands.

Despite the decline in effectiveness, advertising is here to stay.
Perhaps the way we communicate our messages need to be re-evaluated and optimized to be more closely aligned with today's world. Something new is required to break the two-dimensional advertising impasse. Superb picture quality won't do it. Nor will snazzier graphics. Increasingly creative ideas set to digital sound isn't the answer either.

Brand communication has reached a new frontier. In order to successfully conquer future horizons, brands will have to find ways of appealing to the three neglected senses. We should be looking to embrace all five senses in order to create a foundation for future brand strategies.

Over the past decade the car industry has transformed every feature down to the very smell of the car into a branded exercise. Brands like Kellogg's, the breakfast cereal experts, no longer count on the natural sound of their product crunching, but design these in sound labs. Singapore Airlines ensures that the aroma in the cabin is as consistent as the color scheme, which matches the make-up and uniforms worn by the hostesses.

When formulating a sensory branding strategy one of the key criteria for success is to design a platform which will allow you to carefully select the channels, the tools and the senses you intend to tap into when building your future brand.

It is estimated that 40 per cent of the world's Fortune 500 brands will include a sensory branding strategy in their marketing plan by the end of 2006. Quite simply, their future survival will depend on it. If brands want to build and maintain future loyalty, they will have to establish a strategy that appeals to all our senses. This is a fact that no serious brand-builder can ignore.

If you want to understand the dynamics of sensory brand building this chapter summarizes every element of it. It takes you through fascinating statistics from the BRAND sense study and present aspects of branding you most never have noticed before now.

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Learn more about the BRAND sense Symposium - the world's biggest branding conference - exploring the world of sensory branding. Or click here to learn more about Lindstrom's latest BRAND sense DVD program on sensory branding taking you through the steps required to implement 5D branding in your organization.