My Meaningful Media

The 5 Senses and Beyond

When I think of what media makes interaction with confectionary meaningful and memorable, one particular place always comes to mind. In City Walk, Dubai, there used to be a section designed to look like a chocolate factory/gallery. As a guest walks by, they are overwhelmed with the scent of cocoa and the various additives that go into making various chocolate desserts, and whether you’re a fan or not, it draws you in and gets you to actually “sense” the chocolate and lets you into the wonderful world of making chocolate. It was the modern-day realistic version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Food, and confectionary is generally consumed not for the taste as much as what the taste makes you feel. That’s why you’ll notice that most TVCs and communications revolve around capturing the emotions associated with consuming the chocolate.

That being said, the TVC is only an audio/visual medium, which does not do justice to a product whose main attributes are olfactory and gustatory. An experiential activation will check off all five senses that will help cement an experience associated with a product in consumers’ minds. Make the consumers smell it, taste it, see it, feel it, and engage with it, so they have more than one thing to refer to when they recall the product at a later stage.