This document discusses the rise of marketing that targets consumers' sensory experiences and collects immediate self-reported feedback from consumers. Some key points: - Market research companies now use technologies like phones and cameras to collect data on consumers' sensory and emotional responses to brands in everyday life. - Advertisers are moving from mass marketing to more interactive approaches that engage consumers through their senses and personal technologies. - This reflects a new view of consumers where the sensory body, not rational mind, is the site of consumption targeted by sensory/emotional marketing over generalized messages. - Questions are raised about how these new marketing tactics and use of consumer data impact the practice of ethnography and analysis of consumer culture.

1. in focus April 2009 • Anthropology News
Evaluating Sensory Experience thoughtful reasoning
for responses.
By directing market-
self-Reporting consumers and commercial fieldwork ing strategies and media
tactics to reach consumers on indi-
vidualized, personal and sensory
TimoThy de Waal malefyT time to multi-media across all ture (such as Malcolm Gladwell’s lines, marketers and advertisers
BBdo WorldWide and Parsons/ sensorial dimensions. book Blink) discusses the power of are restructuring a new marketing
neW school As these trends reveal an trusting immediate bodily im-pres- reality for consumers—one in
increased use of technology in sions over rational thought. This which consumers participate in
This article explores the rise of research to gather immediate season’s TV programs “Lie to Me” producing a body of knowledge
marketing to consumers’ multisen- consumer responses to brand and “The Mentalist” extol detec- through instant responses using
sory experience. This occurs in two and product use, they also indi- tive work that reads body signals personal technologies. This occurs
mutually interactive ways. Many and sensations in parallel to the marketing of new
research companies in the field of over what people modes of sensory consumption
consumer marketing today employ report on their to suit consumers’ individualized
a variety of multisensory methods own. By using tastes, as self-reported. These prac-
to understand the consumer expe- fast technology tices allow marketing and adver-
rience of their clients’ brands and to receive and tising to produce cultural meanings
products. These methods include relay informa- that build on the self as the private
the use of cell phones, blogs, video tion directly site of consumption. We also
cameras and disposable cameras, to researchers witness in this how new commu-
among other tools. Consumers and consumers, nication technologies change with
are recruited in research to use marketers believe consumer tastes, from a cerebral
these devices and report back their they bypass the reading culture to a more visceral
own sensations and experiences rational guarded audiovisual-kinetic culture, where
when using a product or brand mind and access the immediate interplay of images,
in everyday life. Research compa- truer “gut” re- sounds and graphics are central
nies then collect and analyze these sponses through to a cultural system that supports
data and present their findings immediate reac- the self.
to corporate clients. Such use of Malefyt talking to a consumer about running for a sports tions and sensory What does the rise of multisen-
equipment company. Photo courtesy Elaine Epstein
consumers in research indicates the feedback. sory consumer research and instan-
rise of technology-based individual cate the increased engagement of taneous self-reporting consumer
self-reporting, and it also shows a consumers through technolog- Reason is out, Emotions Are in behavior mean to modes of ethno-
growing interest among marketers ical devices to convey advertised According to Catherine Lutz, graphic enquiry and forms of anal-
in understanding the sensory and messages. This reflects a new western belief holds that physical ysis, and where does this situate the
emotional responses of consumers perspective on consumers that sensations of the body link directly role of the modern ethnographic
to everyday brand experiences. reprioritizes direct multisensory to human emotions, whereas practitioner? How do multisensory
This trend of collecting marketing over mass marketing, thought and reason are perceived media create new challenges to
consumer experiences echoes with personal technology as the as pure mental phenomena. interpreting fieldwork? How is the
another dynamic in marketing: vehicle, and the sensorial body This notion supports marketing work of interpretation produced
selling products and brands as the site for consumption. But experts who now claim that the through these new media and tech-
through multisensory advertising. what does the use of self-reported failure of traditional marketing nology? These and other questions
Notably, marketers are moving consumer feedback mean for approaches is due to overesti- raise challenges to both practicing
away from unidirectional, gener- (and in relation to) the kinds of mating the reasoning power of anthropologists in the fields of
alized mass approaches that push knowledge that trained practi- consumers, and ignoring the way consumer research and academics
advertising messages, in prefer- tioners produce through ethno- consumers actually think and feel interested in consumption, as new
ence for more interactive, direct graphic research? about making decisions. If people modes of being, produced by fast
and immediate approaches that buy with their gut feelings not technologies and sensory brands,
engage consumers personally new Marketing Tactics: The with their reason, then the surest reveal a changed landscape by
through PDAs, Internet, direct sensory Body way to connect with consumers which we understand and relate to
marketing and event sponsor- Implicit in this marketing shift is the is through their bodies. The each other.
ship. For instance, online and belief that mass marketing via tradi-
viral marketing through cell tional means of heavy texts and c o M M E n TA Ry
phones and online games is the generalized messages is less effective
fastest growing part of many than personally directing ads through rapid rise of sensorial marketing Timothy de Waal Malefyt is vice
ad budgets. This dynamic indi- the senses and the body. This places approaches in the last decade is president and Director of Cultural
cates a seismic shift in thinking: the sensorial, emotive body as a new witnessed in car manufacturers Discoveries at BBDO Worldwide
media and marketing companies site of consumption over the cold, who focus on the sound of the advertising agency, leading an in-
once regarded consumption as a rationalizing mind. In this view, car’s doors closing, or Singapore agency ethnographic practice. He also
linear and sequential process that consumer responses gleaned from Airlines’ patented “warm towel” teaches advertising, design research
moved from newsprint to radio surveys, focus groups and even stan- smell, or even Harley Davidson’s methods, and consumerism and
to TV programs. Driven in part by dard ethnographic interviews are attempt to market its throaty shopping as an adjunct professor
trends of consumers who multi- perceived as more rational, calcu- motorcycle roar. Marketing to at Parsons New School for Design.
task while using their computers, lated and less “truthful” than unfil- the senses is perceived as natu- Malefyt is co-editor of Advertising
video game consoles, cell phones tered “raw” responses of consumers rally more personal and individ- Cultures (2003). He can be contacted
and PDAs, media exposure has spontaneously reacting to branded ually focused than heavy textual at timothy.malefyt@bbdo.com or
changed from one-media-at-a- stimuli. Indeed, popular litera- images that require reading and malefytt@newschool.edu.
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