Content that Delights the Senses

Breath in deeply. You should be smelling the rich, fragrant, yet slightly bitter smell of a delicious cappuccino as you read this…

Fancy a macaron with that?

No, not working? Unfortunately, simply describing a smell in your content probably isn’t going to create a memorable experience for your audience.

But imagine the kinds of content experiences you could create if you could go beyond words.

Sight

Sight is probably the most obvious of the senses. Content for the eyes can include:

• text
• images
• infographics/data visualizations
• presentations
• video (for now, just think about the silent kind)

The next frontier in visual content is interactive videos. British Airways has given it a go with their interactive billboard in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Hearing

It’s clear that the eyes get plenty of delicious-looking content to feast upon. But what about the ears? Podcasts are a great example of content aimed at our sense of hearing.

Podcasts can be purely audio, or they can also include video (and chat!), like our friends over on the DradCast.

Hearing + Sight

According to Forrester research, if a picture paints 1,000 words, then one minute of video is worth a whopping 1.8 million. And by 2017, Cisco predicts that video content will be 69% of all consumer internet traffic.

Just one of the many examples of great video content is the well-known Virgin America safety video.

But what do you do if you don’t have the budget to produce a professional quality music video? Using tools like Twitter’s Vine or Instagram Video you can begin trying out video content in small bite-sized chunks. Our friend’s over at Hubspot have given it a go, with this cute Vine about their swag.

Smell

Content you can smell…that’s just silly right? Actually nose-bound content is closer than you might think.

Pop Secret came out with the limited edition Pop Dongle in 2013—a mobile phone attachment that emits the smell of popcorn as you play their popcorn-themed game PopTopia. (Their hilarious promotional video is also an excellent example of engaging video content!).

Earlier in 2014, Johnson & Johnson took out a smellable ad in India, which emitted the smell of baby powder. As noted by Quartz, it’s likely that Johnson & Johnson carefully calculated the fond baby memories its scented ad would evoke.

Dr Morgaine Gaye of Bellwether Food Trends told Quartz’s Scott Smith that she thinks these kinds of experiments are probably just the beginning:

Smell is the only sense we can’t block out—it’s pervasive and powerful…Consumers are looking for experience and brands in an increasingly competitive marketplace—scent branding increases brand identification at a subliminal (sometimes) level.

Taste & Touch

Of course, there are then the other two senses—taste and touch. Pop-ups are a great example of content that can stimulate these last two senses. Right now in San Francisco, Nespresso is doing a pop-up tour to let people see, taste, smell, and touch their new VertuoLine Coffee.

In an increasingly crowded market, it’s likely we’ll see a lot more companies striving to create great content experiences that delight one or more of these less-used senses.

That’s great news, especially for our poor, neglected noses.

Have you been experimenting with content that goes beyond words?