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Copyright 2007 ABA Bank Marketing magazine
The Finishing Touch
Part Five of a 5-part Series on Multi-Sensory Marketing
Anyone who's been around a group of marketers discussing “look and feel” knows that the conversation is really just about aesthetics. If there's any discussion of “feel” at all, it revolves around answering the question, “How does that 'look' make you feel?” And there's no denying that is a valid and important question.
But today's innovative marketers are looking more and more at the other literal meaning of the word “feel.” In other words, “What does our brand feel like...to the touch?” That's because these pioneers are consciously tapping into multisensory marketing strategies that build brand equity into the sense of touch.
The Power of Touch
A brand's feel is the literal sensory experience someone has when he or she physically comes into contact with a brand. Touch is among the most powerful senses for marketers to tap into—almost all people develop a common point of reference for the way things feel to the touch. We all know, for instance, that sandpaper feels rough. Fire feels hot. Plastic feels hard. Marketers who understand clearly what their brand stands for and what attributes define that brand, can tap into the sense of touch as another powerful way to solidify in the minds of customers, employees and the community, exactly what the bank stands for.
Take Kansas City, Kan.-based Brotherhood Bank, for example. When the bank’s Web site states that “handshakes, smiles and warm greetings are liberally distributed at all our facilities,” they really mean it . . . and prove it. All tellers at Brotherhood Bank are encouraged to greet all approaching customers with a sincere handshake. However, with the level of companionship the tellers have with their regular customers, the handshakes usually become a well-received hug. “Our bank’s brand was built on touch,” says Brotherhood Bank’s Marketing Director Steve Hale. “Our tellers have excellent relationships with our customers and community, and a genuine, professional handshake further cultivates that relationship.”
Touch the Campaign
Using the sense of touch not only works in overall brand-building, but also works very well in specific campaigns and promotions. Promotions that leverage more senses than just sight are far more experiential in nature—and are therefore far more engaging and memorable—and ultimately more effective. Utilizing the sense of touch in promotions allows people to physically interact with the bank's message.
Bank marketers can take cues from nonfinancial services companies that are harnessing the sense of touch to market their products. Starbucks has always been at the forefront of experiential marketing, and they do something especially notable during the holiday season. Gift cards, which are usually sold without “wrapping”, come packaged inside something with visual and tactile appeal. Last year it was a felt pouch, this year it was a soft mitten. Whatever it is, it encourages people to pick it up and examine it.
Bank of America is another great example of using touch in campaign promotions. The national bank continues to capitalize on its successful campaign, “Keep The Change” by creating a series of relevant smaller events to accentuate the campaign. The “Keep The Change” promotion rounds up every Bank of America Check Card purchase to the nearest dollar to provide customers with a little extra money. Late last year at New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the bank set up a giant 20- by 10-foot sofa and let people dig under the cushions for prizes. The sofa event likely caused a lot of touching, scratching and clawing for the prizes, and was certainly relevant to the overall concept of the campaign.
Touch is also effective in branch merchandising displays--there's ample opportunity for banks to use this strategy when selling or delivering products. The problem is that most bank “products” are intangibles. How do you create attractive packaging for a home equity loan? Danish Jyske Bank came up with a smart, tactile solution. Their director of corporate communications, Lars Aarup Jensen, explains that the bank wanted to “make our products physical by putting them into boxes like software boxes or DVD boxes.” Customers can pick up a bar-coded box and read the brochures inside. Or, by scanning it, they can watch a whole video detailing the product on a computer monitor. How's that for a multi-sensory experience?
Touch is Everywhere—So Keep it Relevant
As with all multisensory marketing and experiential branding efforts, relevance is of primary importance when determining how to leverage the sense of touch. The sense of touch that a bank uses must be relevant to the attributes of the brand itself. If the brand is based on providing a warm and cozy experience, a choice of cold stainless steel tabletops may be inappropriate. On the other hand, the private bank with premium prices and a high-end experience may choose very heavy ink-fountain pens, because that physical feeling of the heavy pen, and the smoothness of the writing experience, denotes exclusivity that supports the premium brand.
The sense of touch is all around you. Opportunities to leverage touch—to allow people to physically interact with your brand and enjoy relevant sensory experiences—are literally everywhere. A few common venues for leveraging the sense of touch include:
- Human interactions: How and when do you touch your customers? Is it a one-handed business handshake, or a two-handed clasp? Is it a pat on the back, or a high five?
- Physical objects: What objects are available in your environment for people to experience with their hands? Is there merchandise that can be held? Are there product displays that use tactile props that can be interacted with? Are the coffee mugs ceramic, glass, or stainless steel?
- Textures and textiles: Are you a shag-carpet kind of bank or hard wood? Linen fabric or velvet curtains in the offices?
- Furniture and finishes: Hands aren't the only things that register and interpret the sense of touch. It doesn't take a discriminating hiney to know the difference between the experience of a soft overstuffed chair and an ultra-modern hardwood chair...and to interpret how that feeling contributes to their impression of your brand.
Putting Touch to Work for Your Bank
There are countless opportunities for you to put the sense of touch to work in building your bank's brand—so get started now. Knowing that you must keep your sense of touch relevant and aligned with the rest of your multisensory brand development efforts, here's how to kick start a touch campaign today:
- Refresh on what your brand is really all about. If you've never gone through a deep, soul-searching brand discovery exercise, now is the time. You need to first know who you are before you can do a good job of telling and proving that story through touch and other multisensory techniques.
- Choose your top five unique key brand attributes. Try to avoid seemingly positive but actually generic attributes like “friendly” or “community oriented.” Get to the more interesting and authentic attributes only your bank can stake a claim to. Maybe you're “motherly,” “slightly crazed” or “trendy.”
- Now close your eyes and focus on those top five attributes. Ask yourself questions like, “If I were holding a [trendy] coffee mug, what would it feel like to my fingers?” “How can the wood I choose for my coffee table in the sitting area make people think we're [motherly]?” “What kind of handshake should I give people so that they feel we're [slightly crazed]?”
- Coordinate your “touch” plans with your other multisensory branding efforts. That new style of coffee mug (a “touch” tactic) would probably fit nicely with the signature blend of coffee you're developing (a “taste” tactic). Or those new stainless steel tables would likely be well-introduced at the same time the new ambient grooves hit your branch speaker system.
- Put these answers into action—create a new policy for handshaking, purchase the brand-appropriate coffee table, and buy the coffee mug that feels just right.
- Repeat constantly—this is an everyday, every week effort. Remember that when you truly know your brand, no decision is ever arbitrary. Every decision, choice and action is an opportunity to tell and prove your story using multiple senses, including touch.
Seize the multisensory branding and marketing opportunity
Building a multisensory brand using the sense of touch is well within your reach (pun intended). Remember, if your brand is the sum total of all the experiences people have with you, and if people undergo experiences using all five of their senses...then you ought to be using all five of those senses as you work to build your brand. You're doing your bank a disservice not to.
I challenge you to go beyond the typical marketing and branding tools employed by all the average banks. Don't limit yourself by only using the industry-standard one-of-five senses approach. Get ahead of the curve, the industry, and your competition with multisensory marketing and experiential branding.