Subliminal Branding Part 2: ‘Use Touch to Influence Brand Perceptions’
While you are not paying attention, there is so much going on in your brain. One of those subliminal activities is the interactions among your senses. What you see influences what you taste, what you touch informs what you hear, and what you smell helps shape what you see. Just look at your everyday language and notice how intuitive the following metaphors are: warm colors, sweet silence, and sharp smell.
We have five basic senses: hearing, touch, sight, smell, and taste (although we also have more subtle senses like the sense of space and balance). Previously, we focused on hearing and discussed how speech sounds suggest meaning.
What we hear informs what we see and what we taste. That is called sound symbolism. Big things must sound big, just like smooth things must sound smooth. For instance, the sound “ih” — as in “mill” — conveys speed and smallness, whereas the sound “ah” — as in “mall” — conveys slowness and largeness. But there is more!
Sounds also influence how we perceive the taste of foods and drinks. Case in point: Softer-sounding, lower-pitched words are strongly associated with fatty foods such as butter, chocolate, and donuts. By comparison, high-pitched words are better associated with linguistically lightweight foods such as biscuits, salad, and crackers.
This time, we will concentrate on the sense of touch. Our skin constantly plays tricks on us. If you can understand the secrets, biases, and roadblocks of the sense of touch, you can unlock your brand’s true potential. Let’s see a few ways you can do that!
What color are you touching?
Certain things are hard-wired in all of us. For instance, even an infant knows that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object. Color-temperature association is not any different.
Research shows that people worldwide perceive blue as cool and red as warm. To illustrate, paint the walls of a room blue, and people will sense the temperature to be cooler. Keep the temperature the same, and this time paint the walls red. The same people will feel the temperature warmer.
We associate temperature with colors. There is no surprise there. But how about textures? Do they also bring to mind specific colors?
To answer that question, researchers created 18 objects based on three scales: roughness, hardness, and roundness.
Then, they hid the objects behind a fabric screen and asked participants to place their hands through the opening to feel each thing. Finally, they asked the participants to choose a color for each object from an on-screen electronic color wheel. The results showed that we make systematic associations between touch and color. How?
For starters, it turned out that people associated brighter colors with smoother, softer, and rounder objects. In contrast, the rougher, harder, and pointier a thing was, the darker the color it evoked. But the story doesn’t end there!
Roughness-smoothness of the object, too, had a significant effect on chroma (the purity-intensity of a color). To give you an idea, a fire-engine red is a high-chroma red, whereas a brick red is a low-chroma one. In the research, participants associated smoother and softer objects with livelier colors. The opposite was also true. Rougher and harder things were associated with more neutral colors.
Finally, some objects were associated with specific colors. In particular, yellow, white, and pink were chosen for the smoothest and softest things. In contrast, brown and mainly black were chosen significantly more often for the roughest and hardest objects than the smoothest ones. Also, red and black were chosen more frequently for the pointiest things than for the roundest ones. Those findings were as valid for adults as they were for 5-year-olds!
Can you touch that word?
We saw that touching something with a texture can influence our color perception. But how about thoughts and emotions? Can different surfaces evoke distinct feelings? It sounds unlikely, but the answer is “yes!”
In another study, researchers crafted eight different-shaped wood and plastic objects. One is irregular and spiky in all dimensions; the other bulbous and smooth. The surface of one is smooth, with chamfered edges, and the other feels rough.
Then they put each object in a nontransparent bag. They handed the bags to participants one by one and asked them not to look inside the bag but to feel the two things inside and to bring out either Kiki or Bouba.
Results? 84% of participants consistently selected the smooth object as Bouba or the spiky object as Kiki. The researchers found that even people with a visual impairment associated sharp/jagged shapes with Kiki and rounded/smooth shapes with Bouba!
So, textures, surfaces, and shapes have meaning. But what do they mean exactly?
In a separate experiment, researchers explored the associations between the sense of touch and people’s emotional states. They stroked cotton, satin, tinfoil, sandpaper, and an abrasive sponge along the participants’ forearms. Participants were then asked to evaluate the materials along several dimensions.
Participants matched smooth materials with words such as ‘bright,’ ‘light,’ ‘quiet,’ and ‘lightweight,’ while rough materials were associated with the words ‘dim,’ ‘dark,’ ‘loud,’ and ‘heavy.’ As the cherry on top, smooth materials were associated with the labels ‘feminine’ and ‘beautiful,’ whereas the rough textures were associated with the opposite adjectives ‘masculine’ and ‘ugly’!
The experiments show that we don’t only associate sounds, vision, and textures; we also relate pleasantness, relief, and comfort with smooth surfaces and their absence with rough materials!
Haptic Branding Cheat Sheet
Our skin is our biggest bodily organ; according to scientists, it is the most ancient. With astonishing precision, we can feel pressure, pain, texture, vibrations, and temperature. That means our sense of touch has an impact on what we buy. We will have positive feelings toward a product if the touch is positive.
Researchers have shown that surfaces help shape our perceptions. That’s why you must consider the texture of your product. Here’s a cheat sheet for you:
- Prefer brighter-more luminous colors if the surface of your product is: — smooth
— soft
— round - Use darker-less luminous colors if the texture of your product is:
— rough
— hard
— pointy - If you want your product to be perceived as smoother and softer, use the following:
— Lively-saturated colors
— Yellow, white, and pink - If you want your product to be perceived as rougher and harder, use the following:
— Dull-neutral colors
— Brown and mainly black - If the texture of your product is pointy, prefer:
— Red
— Black - Use smooth textures if you want your product to be perceived as:
— Beautiful
— Feminine - Use rough textures if you want your product to be perceived as:
— Masculine
More ways you can use haptic branding
For Retailers
Let’s first start with retail brands that offer a physical product. Aside from following the above cheat sheet, free samples are the most popular marketing tactic. Free trials effectively make customers try the product before they buy.
Offering free delivery and returns is another tried and valid tactic. Digital retailers like Warby Parker encourage customers to touch and test their products without risk.
Finally, companies like IKEA cleverly use the power of touch. For instance, they place soft blankets next to furniture that doesn’t evoke such positive haptic sensations. By doing that, they transfer positive feelings from the blanket to the furniture.
For Digital Brands
What if you don’t sell a physical product? There are still some ways to tap into haptic branding.
One popular way is to create experiences that are not directly related to the product or service. Think about fancy bank lounges at airports. Some of them look like stylistic art galleries or high-end co-working spaces.
IBM follows a different route. The company has a vision of a future in which all fields -from healthcare to retail, finance, transportation, and cities- become more intelligent thanks to technology. The problem is that digital technology is an intangible concept. But, IBM used a brilliant street campaign to make its invisible offering tangible.
No matter how creative you get, sometimes touch might not be an option. In such cases, you may consider approximating the experiences you’d gain from touching.
There are some futuristic “haptic technologies” like full-body haptic suits. Arguably we still have a few years to get there. That said, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies are becoming mainstream. They probably offer the best approximation to touching.
Likewise, if your customers cannot touch your product or service, you can still help them imagine the feel of your product. Well-narrated product videos could serve as a good proxy for your customers.
For B2B Brands
Finally, how about your service brands? You can tap into the power of haptic sensations to become a sought-after solution provider. How?
For instance, did you know that people who feel hard sensations are less likely to shift in their decisions? People deem conversations stricter after touching a hard object, but not more positive.
So, you can ensure that the sofas in your reception area and chairs in your meeting rooms are soft and comfortable.
Another interesting finding is that when people hold a warm cup, they perceive others to have a more genial personality than if they’re holding a cup of cold liquid. So, how about offering your clients a cup of hot coffee or tea in a mug before a meeting?
Here is another one. Research shows that we become more serious when we hold a heavy object. You can hand them a heavy report if you want your clients to allocate more resources to your project.
Many companies neglect touch as a part of their brand identity. You can get ahead by implementing the simple tactics above. The following article will discuss how our eyes play tricks on us and help shape our brand perceptions.
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