• Guardian (U.K.), Wednesday, February 1, 2006 11:31 AM

Branding and marketing are too reliant on consumers' sense of sight and should take more time to stop and smell the roses, and everything else for that matter. At least that's the thinking put forth by a new U.K.-based company called the Brand Sense Agency, which describes itself as a sensory communications group. The BSA says it's "extraordinary" that 83 percent of all commercial communication is visual, because 75 percent of our emotions are influenced by what we smell. The group is not leaving out our sense of sound, either, claiming that it, too, gets short shrift, because there's a 65 percent chance a person's mood can change from hearing a new sound. The company wants to encourage more marketers to act like Kellogg's, which tested the crunch of its cornflakes in a sound lab before copyrighting it, and Singapore Airlines, which patented the scent used in its flight attendants' perfume and on its hot towels.

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