Designing events for the five senses
Do you wanna know about designing events that are memorable for your customers? In this reaction paper I deal with a video of Barry Ross Rinehart’s speech about “What Designing Events for the Five Senses Means”. I go through the senses, why to use them, how to actually do it and how to measure the efficiency. I share my opinions about the information in the video and I also tell my thoughts on how some parts could be even better, in the last part I have my conclusions. In the beginning I wanted to tell the reason why I did pick this topic and how it fits in our study program.
In the video Barry Rinehart was telling about the five senses and how they work with our brain. He used examples and told about his own experiences. The point in the video was to tell us why it is important to activate all the senses in an event and give us the tools on how to do it.
In the study unit we process customer experience management and this video was telling how to activate your customers and give them a memorable experience at your event. You also get information about the logic behind a person’s brains and you can adapt this information also in your marketing campaigns.
For me this topic was very interesting because I’m interested in event production and I like to find new perspectives on how things can be done in a customer oriented way. I find it interesting how your own product is able to generate value for the customer.
What are the five senses?
In the video Rinehart said that senses are biological receptors. The sensors take the information from our surroundings and send that data to our brains. All that information helps us remember how certain things happened.
The five senses that we do want to activate in events are:
- Hearing
- Sight
- Smell
- Touch
- Taste
Why to use them?
It has been studied that the person remembers 20% of the information they can see and hear. And when you add one sense more to the mix, the person is 70 % more likely to remember it. I think that this point is really important to explain why it is good to activate more senses. I feel this works also in studying because I do remember things better when I can hear, see and then write it down.
Another point in the video was that you should make all the things the customer can sense to be more positive than negative. Good smells, nice lights and pretty view. It was reasoned because emotions and senses work together. But in my opinion it’s more about what is the context. There are places you are looking for negative sensations, for example horror movies and Halloween parties.
In the action
Rinehart used an example of him as a child when his parents made this Halloween event. They made a path to the cellar where one kid at time got to come down to the dark room. In the room they had spider webs, dry ice and they acted Frankenstein.
All the senses were activated. Kids saw only darkness, they smelled the mud, they touched eyeballs and internals, tasted the blood from the internals, and they heard the story of a Frankenstein. For me this example just sounded a bit cruel because if I was a child I would just freak out and it wouldn’t be any fun.
I listed from the video three ways to activate a multi sensory world: Depriving senses, enhancing senses and alerting senses. Depriving could be turning the lights off, enhancing could be 4D experiences and alerting could be making something look bad but it tastes good.
I have never tried any 4D movie theaters myself but I think the same idea could be a good way to develop virtual reality tourism. If we could offer activities and events where you can use virtual reality classes but you can also feel the wind and water, even move according to the activity.
Depriving senses could work in some events. In food or wine tastings they could blindfold you so you would just taste and smell the food. But for the festivals you really can’t take off hearing, seeing or feeling or you will ruin the event.
How to measure?
There was a great idea, on how to measure the efficiency of multi sense practice, in the video. You can make a timeline for the event and then measure every step of the timeline and how the clients felt all the senses in every step of the way. Then you can see how the senses and feelings change.
Under here you can see the screenshot of the video and it is also visually pleasing how the results are presented. Anyway I think you would need to also collect information about the customer group. Now you can only see how strong the senses were and was the feeling positive or negative. You don’t know what is the age range or anything specific of the group that answered this survey. You don’t even know if they are part of your target group.
Conclusion
Top things that stayed in my mind are the minimum things you need for a good event: good lights, great sound system, nice chairs, good temperature, great food and it smells good. I think that you will need imagination to take all this under consideration when you are planning an event.
In my opinion these tips can also help you to make meaningful ads and marketing content to your customers. For example if your content triggers the customers hearing, seeing and then you have some call to an action they could remember your ad better. Or also if the ad is emotional it helps the customer to remember it.
References
Event Innovation Forum 2015: What Designing Events for the Five Senses Means. Barry Ross Rinehart. Bishbash & Godfather Films. YouTube video. https://www.bizbash.com/home/video/13559801/what-designing-events-for-the-five-senses-means