Imagine I was meeting you for the first time and I gave you a handshake. Imagine I gave you one of those limp handshakes. A little bit wet, not really impressive. If you didn’t know anything about me, would you employ me? Probably not. Although there are few links between a person’s handshake and their personality, we actually create links between our senses. We evaluate people not just on what they say and what they look like, but also based on the sense of touch. That gives you an idea about how important our senses are and how important they are when we are building brands.

Did you know that in 1980, seven out of ten new product releases failed to survive three months? Today, eight out of ten new product releases fail. Despite all the money spent on research, we are failing more and more when we release products. We need to find another way to create something successful. I think the strategy is to appeal to the senses.

Today 83 per cent of all the communication you and I are exposed to is received visually. That means only 17 per cent is left to the other four senses. That creates a problem when I, as a consumer, want to evaluate a brand or a product. The trick will have to be to appeal to more senses.

Let me share a little strategy with you, which I call “smash your brand”. The strategy is from 1915 and goes back to the fundamental briefing behind the Coca-Cola bottle. The original brief was to develop a bottle so smart that if you threw it on the floor and it smashed into thousands of pieces, you would still be able to pick up one of the pieces and recognise the brand.

Now, can I smash your brand? Is it possible for me, just by the colour of your brand or by the shape of it or by the sound or smell, to recognise your brand? Or is it that if I removed your logo from every piece of communication you have, nothing would be left? You see, that is the problem today. Almost all communication is dependent on a logo. But there are a lot of other elements we may be missing.

Certain companies are working on ownership of a colour. Tiffany & Co, for example, owns the Tiffany blue colour, which is very distinct. In fact, the little blue box for jewellery is so unique that the colour is a patent of Tiffany. I did a test about two years ago in which I invited about 600 women into a room. Each of them received a present from us of a blue Tiffany box. There was nothing in it, I have to admit. When they received it, we measured their heart rate and their blood pressure, and their heart rate went up 20 per cent. So, if you want to make sure you get attention at home, this might be one way to do it.

It also tells you another thing. Those women never saw the logo, they just saw the colour. Colours obviously have an enormous power. Do not assume, however, that you can actually own a colour. This is not something you should take for granted.

Another element is smell. In fact, 75 per cent of all the emotions we experience every day are due to the sense of smell. Just before I wrote my book Brand Sense, which is based on the largest research study in the world on our five senses, I conducted a study. The reason I did this was an experience I had when I was in Tokyo. I was walking down the street in an area called Shibuya, when suddenly this beautiful woman passed by and she was wearing the most amazing perfume. It took me straight back in time. In fact, my best friend’s mother wore that perfume when I was a little kid.

My question was: can you brand something as a smell? In fact, very few brands are doing that today. Think about Crayola crayons. Do you remember the colourful crayons you had when you were a kid? I bet if you took those crayons and put them in front of your nose right now, you would be a six-year-old again just because of a smell.

In fact, that smell is gone today in most of the Crayola crayons. They removed it by mistake when they changed the ingredients. They did not realise they owned a smashable component because they were so focused on the logo.

Now let’s think about touch. Just take a look at your iPod if you have one. Can you find the logo on the front? There isn't one. It's a smashable brand. Just the shape of it, the feel of it, the sound of it. Can you hear the clicking of the wheel when it is ticking around?

That brings me to sound. Sound is incredibly powerful. Just think about a Nokia phone. Do you know the ring-tone? That particular tune is a branded tune. Let me compare it with another tune, Intel Inside. If I played that tune, you would probably remember that as well. The awareness for the Intel Inside tune is 56 per cent. The awareness for Nokia is 41 per cent. Intel last year spent $320 million promoting that particular tune. Nokia spent zero. That is the difference between branding and smart branding, because if you optimise all the touch points you have, one by one, you suddenly will realise your brand is increasing in value.

So what should you do to make this happen? The first thing you need to do is to figure out what you own already. It might be a colour or a sound or a smell.

My experience is to go with what I call low-hanging fruit, things you can easily implement, that are easy to understand, that people within your organisation can relate to and that do not cost a lot of money. Low-hanging fruit are things that are memorable in my mind.

As an example, I will tell a little story about my business card. I have written four books and each of those books, I have realised, sometimes has a huge importance for people. In fact every time people come up to me with a copy of my book, many pages have been folded. I suddenly realised that my brand was not my name, it is a folded corner.

So my business card has a corner, folded on purpose with my brand embossed on the corner. People will never forget me once they have seen my business card and it will pop out among the other 200 business cards they have because it appeals to the sense of touch and sense of sight. Using sensory branding does not have to cost a fortune. It is just a matter of being creative.

Starting young

-Martin Lindstrom, born in 1970, is a branding expert who started his own advertising agency in Denmark at the age of 12. Before that, he worked for Lego’s design department

-He went on to become an advertising executive with BBDO and chief executive of BBDO Interactive Asia, before being appointed global chief operating officer of British Telecom/Looksmart

-He advises McDonald’s, Disney, Microsoft and Nokia