Why Branding is Like Synesthesia
AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
When I first started as a freelance Graphic Designer, I scoured the web for a cheat sheet or a decision tree to tell me, with definite confidence, what colors to use when.
You might relate to this if you’ve ever had to make any “creative” decision: “But which is the correct choice: blue or red?!”
As a beginner designer, it was a scary and difficult place to be in, second-guessing all my decisions. I needed some sort of reason or standard approach that would tell me that I’m doing the right thing. But the more I looked, the more I realized that such a universal cheat sheet not only does not exist but also shouldn't.
There is always a reason behind all good decisions, even when they seem arbitrary. And yes, brand strategy is the way to get to that reason. But what does Synesthesia have to do with it?
What is Synesthesia
First, Synesthesia is a fancy name for when you experience one of your senses through another. For example, you hear music and see it expressed in shapes in your mind's eye. Or number seven is purple for some reason. The examples are many, as you can have any combination of the senses cross-wiring with the other.
Music producer Pharell Williams experiences music as color:
“It’s the only way that I can identify what something sounds like. I know when something is in key because it either matches the same color or it doesn’t.”
Synesthesia is not following any outward logic, it's a deeply individual experience and varies from person to person. Even between people who have the same type of overlap - to take the previous example, for one person seven is purple, but for another, it can be green.
Branding vs Synesthesia
The Perfume industry relies on this principle a lot, making use of a crossing of the senses, as they mostly advertise a smell through visual and auditory cues. If they get it right, you can tell whether it's strong or subtle, masculine, floral, fruity, or fresh just by seeing the ad. Lucky for them, they can rely on a rotary of common connections, as we have been trained to understand that pink is floral, green is fresh and orange is fruity, simply by seeing these associations in our everyday lives over and over again.
Unlike Synesthesia, branding is a collective experience, it appeals to the symbols and associations we all have and share as a culture. As with every communication effort, you need both the sender and the receiver to understand the coding language. Otherwise, the message gets lost, or at the very best would only be relevant to a couple of people.
But much like Synesthesia, branding is essentially connecting one sense to the other, in an effort to translate the brand’s core essence into coherent signals that can be perceived through the 5 organs.
Much like Synesthesia, branding is essentially connecting one sense to the other.
The most obvious one is the visual sense - as this is what comes to mind first when we think of branding - the color scheme, the logo, the fonts.. all visual cues. But what about the others?
Why should you consider all the 5 senses when you design your brand?
There are 4 more senses that are generally ignored in branding and marketing. Many companies and agencies are waking up to it, but to me, this spells out an opportunity:
Differentiation is one goal. By integrating sound or smell into your brand strategy, you can easily stand out amongst a mass of companies that stop at logo design.
Multi-layered communication is another. You have more channels at your disposal through which you can engage your customers and express the essence of your brand.
An emotional connection with your target audience is yet another. Communicating visually is efficient, especially in an increasingly digital world. It’s good at relaying information, but it’s less efficient in building brand loyalty and metaphorically touching your target audience.
This matters because, according to Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, 95 percent of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind. In practice, this means that we first make the decision at the emotional, instinctual level, and then try to find a rational justification for it. All of it without us even being aware of the process.
95% percent of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind
Homo Economicus, the embodiment of perfect rationality is a nice theoretical concept but does not exist in real life. We are not rational agents, we are humans. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will start speaking to Homo Sapiens, in a way that we can relate to.
The place to start is from looking at all the 5 human senses, the channels through which we perceive the world. We’ll explore each of these in detail in the next posts, and in the process, learn how to wilfully create these Synesthetic connections that tell the rich story of our brands.