Brand Sense: How to Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound [Hardcover]

A basic principle of branding is to keep your promise. Brand Sense failed to do this for me.

Lindstrom's latest offering argues that when building brands marketeers need to plan how they will influence all the human senses. True, but to position this book as a breakthrough in branding is simply a gross overstatement and sets the reader for a big disappointment. It simply does not deliver on its promise.

The book assembles a plethora of prestigious brand thinkers, practitioners and research authorities to illustrate and provide testimonials to support his arguments. Books by Noel Kapferer, Aaker, Chris Macrae, Gavin Morgan, Klaus Schmidt, Alan Mitchell offer far more breakthrough thinking than this book.

Lindstrom's examples on "sense branding" do contain some interesting anecdotes about brands using touch, smell and taste and how they could benefit from thinking a bit more about adding "sensual" aspects to their brands and communication channels. In that it is a useful reminder and maybe a creative stimulant for the brand manager.

I found much repetition of his ideas to the point that at times it creates a feeling of deja vue, and makes the book much longer than it needs to be.

The chapter on Brand as Religion I hard to link its relevance back to the senses theme. It felt a bit like padding.

The research background conributed by Millward Brown feels a bit bolted on, and could have been more integrated into Lindstrom's arguments. This section does, however, give a glimpse into the way deep quantitative research studies are designed and analysed.

What I felt missing was any consideration that people may have preferences for different senses, an argument at the heart of areas like NLP. Also senses vary in their impact for different people in different contexts. After all, we all experience and construe the world differently, even with the same senses.

There are the obligatory new models, processes to structure a brand sense audit, but these are not articulated enough to do really feel like you could do something with them on Monday Morning. They struck me as being a set of new words around existing concepts. Maybe you need pay to go on Lindstrom's seminars and workshops to experience their value?

The hype (masterfully being created) around the book and its Dual-Book website will certainly enhance the surface of "Lindstrom brand", but when the informed brand reader examines the substance, I think they will FEEL very disappointed. Not a memorable experience for me.

P.S It was a shame the book itself had not be perfumed to make Lindstrom's point directly :)

***** Accessible

***** Inspiring

**** Practical

**** Relevant (to audio branding)

**** Well-grounded

BRAND sense isn't a book (although, without qualification, it's one I recommend that anyone with an interest in business strategy, branding, marketing or communications should read!) It's a fountainhead of inspiration, ideas, and practical approaches via a whole community of innovators in anticipating a future certainty: consumer behaviour, attitudes and expectations of brands are radically changing. In his forward, Philip Kotler puts his finger on the resulting imperative: "Distinctive brands (must) deliver a full sensory and emotional experience ... It pays to attach sound, such as music or powerful words, or symbols. The combination of visual and audio stimuli delivers a 2 + 2 = 5 impact."

The BRAND sense offerings have an evangelical tone of voice you will recognise from the world of internet marketing and social media (be warned, if this is not your thing!). They include a web community at www.dualbook.com (which you can access free of charge using a unique ID code in the book) plus the weekly video blog BRANDFlash, bring to life the always inciteful words of Benjamin Franklin: "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I'll understand."

As an audio branding specialist, I'm intrigued to what extent Martin's prediction - estimating 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 - has come true. "Quite simply, their 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 can ignore." While I agree (well, I would, wouldn't I!), its interesting to map the impact on these views of the continuing fragmentation of the media, and the diversity of way people are engaging with low cost technologies, be they the web, mobile phones, palm held devices, interactive television, touch sensitive displays, and so the list continues.

BRAND sense is a first step down a long road to try to interpret future customer needs, and to create the emotionally-charged brands that meet them.

Martin Lindstrom is a true genius and one who definately thinks outside of the Square.

This is a must read for anyone who wants to take there business to the next level, it will truely make you rethink every marketing approach you have ever taken and will ever take in the future.