Marketer: this is what you can learn from the Rituals scented candle
Want to take control of your prompts and get more out of AI tools? Take the online course on December 19
People are programmable. Marketing makes full use of this way of conditioning. Brands, logos, products and services are combined with pleasant associations such as colours, humour, music and beautiful people. I will take you along in this marketing story, which I will combine with examples from daily life. Time for a column!
It’s Wednesday morning, my day off. Scattered across the floor are bottles of wine, beer, bags of nuts, a gift card and a Rituals gift wrap. Yes, I’ve just unpacked my Christmas package.
I also found a scented candle from Rituals. “It smells like a bathroom in here,” said the son after the candle had been flickering in the living room for a while. I agreed and thought of a nice full bath with soft bubble bath and a good book. But hey, it was Wednesday morning so I continued my daily routine. First cleaning and then exercising. The cleaning was still possible, but the exercising didn’t really get off the ground. Or well, I was lying on the exercise mat on the floor, but I couldn’t really get into the cardio rhythm. I was just in too relaxed a mood. And that was, I realized, because of the scent of the candle.
The Pavlov Effect of Rituals
I associate Rituals with ‘relaxing’. And that scent works so strongly that I felt like chilling. Or reading a book, but certainly not exercising at full speed. Nice of Rituals, because this is a beautiful piece of the Pavlov effect. The Russian physiologist Pavlov did not use a scented candle, but a dog to explain human behavior.
Dogs were only given their food after each time they heard a bell. This created an unconscious association between sound and food. Because even when Pavlov rang the bell, but no food came, the dogs started to salivate. Well conditioned.
That is interesting, because people are – just like animals – programmable. Within marketing, of course, this way of conditioning is used extensively. Brands, logos, products and services are combined with pleasant associations such as colours, humour, music and beautiful – and nowadays fortunately often diverse – people. It is about brand associations that are often also unconscious.
Also read: Do you recognize Coolblue’s whistle? 9 out of 10 list of poland consumer email Dutch people don’t. This is why…
Brand image and brand associations
Let’s take Burger King and McDonald’s as an example. Basically both are fast food restaurants with the same segment, but they still score differently on brand image and unconscious brand associations. McDonald’s scores more positively on the association ‘cosy’ than Burger King. And that has an explanation. Where Burger King focuses more on the product, you see more people and families in McDonald’s in their advertising. What you radiate is linked to your brand in the long term.
Rituals focuses on relaxation and finding happiness how to break the performance marketing growth ceiling in small things. They have done this so well that I couldn’t do any sports, because I felt like reading and chilling. A clever piece of marketing. Should you aleart news create your own fragrance as a brand? No, you don’t have to go that far. But always be aware of the associations you can evoke. At our company, we often use three to five brand pillars for our clients that we include in the marketing expressions. Each and every one of these points is a distinctive position within their sector.
These can also be good points that you do not directly bring forward in your communication as a USP. Because imagine that you are a human organization because you respond quickly to questions, think along with the customer and employ Dutch-speaking people. Then you do not spoon this up as one of your USPs, but you do let it come back in your communication.
Clearly findable contact moments, photos and names of your employees and communication in Dutch at B1 level. You ensure that the association of your brand is human. And that is exactly what it is all about. Using all your marketing and communication expressions in such a way that people have the association that you want to achieve.