Synesthetic Marketing: Could Your Presentation Taste Better?

Don't aim to influence just one of our senses. Connect them and you'll see wonders in your marketing results.

Photocredit: Vimodi

Photocredit: Vimodi

Is your sales and marketing pitch a red, a blue or is it a Bouba or a Kiki? Is it sweet enough?

‘Please, gentlemen, a little bluer, if you please! – when Franz Liszt addressed his orchestra with these words, the musicians were stunned. How on earth do you play bluer? Liszt wasn't the only composer who claimed to literally see the colors of music. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov believed C major was white, and the key of B major was a “gloomy dark blue with a steel shine.” Other people, meanwhile, are capable of seeing the colors of letters. Vladimir Nabokovsaid famously that to him, rainbow looked like this: KZSPYGV

Show people a star-like shape, ask if it's called a “Bouba” or a “Kiki”, and 98% will choose the second answer. Some colors, shapes and sounds just match better in our brains, just like some smells fit particularly well with some colors or musical notes. Companies like Starbucks or Nestlé are already using such “crossmodal correspondences” to promote their products. Interactions between the senses can be used in many ways besides marketing – even to prepare better presentations.

Synesthetes

Synesthetes, people for whom stimulating one sense causes experiences in another, are rather rare creatures – only one in twenty-three of us are like that. Some famous synesthetes include Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder. But nowadays scientists are discovering more and more proof that we all are a bit like Liszt and Nabokov: That all our senses interact with each other to create a fuller, more complex and fascinating world. We can all hear smells, taste colors, and smell music on some level.

“It just always stuck out in my mind, and I could always see it. I don't know if that makes sense, but I could always visualize what I was hearing… Yeah, it was always like weird colors.” 
— From a Nightline with Pharrell

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