• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, May 1, 2009

The sensory-marketing road map takes a few left turns.

The taxi stops at the hotel curb; you leap out of it into the hot desert sun, and after shoveling a few bills through the driver's side window, you pull your bag from the trunk and dart toward the automated doors before breaking into a full-on sweat. Seconds later, you're under assault.

The refrigerated air slaps your skin. The clanging soundtrack - a fantasia of swirling electronic bells and whistles, punctuated by an occasional roar from the assembled throng, with a faint classic-rock backdrop - envelops you in a swoon. The visuals run the gamut from bright and brilliant to dingy and distorted; you yank off your sunglasses to get an unshadowed glimpse of the humanity parading in front of you. You smell smoke and stale perfume and ... something akin to candy? Piped-in?

Before diving in, you take a lap around the floor. Jarring sounds abound, whether the young couple arguing along the sidewall or the waitress cooing suggestively as she totes a tray of cocktails. Nearing the innermost circle - the smoke-shrouded bar, its air tinged with the saccharine pong of many an umbrella-topped cocktail - you feel the ground shift subtly beneath your feet: The hard linoleum has given way to spongy carpet, all the more comfortable for the next 12 hours of wandering from station to station. A triumphant bellow erupts right behind you as a large wheel slowly clicks into place.

You want to be among them. An attendant points you toward an atm. For the first of what promises to be many, many times, you reach for your wallet.

The casino environment - in this case, the floor of Las Vegas's Hard Rock Hotel - represents perhaps the most extreme example of sensory marketing. The visitor's every sense is activated, vitalized and maybe preyed upon: from the crispness of the atm-fresh stack of $20 bills in hand to the slot-machine orchestra, fellow visitors to dodge (hey, that's Vince Neil!) and showgirls to, uh, treat with respect and totally not stare at.

If some of the more progressive marketers have it their way, more environments will start to resemble the casino - not in the we-will-separate-you-from-your-money way, but in the appeal-to-each-of-the-five-senses one. Certain companies have already started to move in this direction, most notably Westin Hotels (the same scent and soundtrack permeates each of its properties) and Singapore Airlines (it's rumored that flight attendants are asked to apply the same fragrance). The general idea: consistently provide a multitude of sensory cues to light up every part of the would-be customer's brain.

Of course, if you're attempting to excite the senses, it's important that you do it right. Specific smells, sounds, sights, touches and tastes will inevitably register in the memory, so you don't want that memory to be a negative one. ("Friggin' cvs has Bob Marley's Legend on an endless loop? I'm going to Walgreens.")

You might be surprised by how far such tactics have already advanced and, perhaps, amazed by the direction in which they're heading.