Advertising and the Five Senses

Advertising uses all of the five human senses to appeal to a target market. The problem with this is that it must be achieved using only two of the senses, sight and sound. Taste, touch and smell must be sold without actually utilising any of the senses.

The following adverts are examples of how all five have been used in advertising...

Smell

As unappealing as it may be, this advert for Glade air freshener discusses a smell that everybody is familiar with. The unsavoury scent of a bathroom. It then states that this product can fix this particular problem without being overpowering. It isn't selling the actual scent itself, for example 'Summer Breeze' or 'Mountain Air', it is selling the products ability to disguise a smell that is generally considered unpleasant.

Sight

Sony created an advert for a new television, focussing on its high quality colour picture. Not only has colour itself been used in the advert, but it has been used in a completely unusual way. This attracts the audience's attention; paint fireworks explode all over an estate of flats, there is no sound apart from the explosions, there is no sign of the brand or the technology they are promoting. With no explanation provided, this bizarre scene and use of colour creates curiosity amongst the audience and so they watch it until the end. Job done.

Touch

The classic Andrex puppy advertisment. Andrex toilet paper is known to be very soft, cute little puppies are known to be the best kind of soft. Simple concept but it works so well.

Taste

From the beginning of this advert for Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range, Jamie Oliver talks about taste and taste testing. Hearing about how something tastes automatically makes the audience imagine the experience. When the advert is about to finish, we see Jamie take a bite of a sausage, a staple of british cooking and something most people in the UK can relate to, and really enjoy it. Next time you crave sausage and mash for dinner, this advert may well come to mind.

Sound

There isn't a great deal of visual stimulation in this advert, but the sound is relaxing and slow paced and this makes people stop and look at the television because we are so used to hectic, busy sounds. Obviously, watching this advert for Bose speakers, you don't get the effect of the speakers; but you can see by the use of instrumentalists what the sound could be like and so how it would be through Bose speakers. However without the music in this production, the advertisment is uninteresting and meaningless.

Without doubt, all senses, apart from maybe smell, are targeted by advertisers; it is the careful selection of which one to focus on to sell a particular product or service that makes a campaign successful.