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Marketing: the future is in the senses
Using the five senses in marketing is a must
The industry looks much different from the Mad Men era of lore
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Zoe Landi Fontana, The Weekly Journal
You probably won’t make it to the end of this article. Not because it’s boring per se, but because nothing holds your attention for more than eight seconds.
From 2000 to 2022, average attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to eight seconds — the same as a goldfish’s. Throw in the fact that consumers are bombarded with over 10,000 messages per day and it’s easy to understand why.
As consumers, we get sucked into the currents of constantly changing trends. As creators or marketers, we need to decide how to adapt to and influence them. “Advertising as we know it is dying,” said Raj Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President, Healthcare Business, Mastercard. “Traditional ways of telling stories are changing.”
According to Rajamannar, 99% of marketing is based on sight and sound. Touch, taste, and smell are still on the table for creating an unforgettable experience for customers. It’s difficult to increase consumers’ attention spans, but it is possible to circumvent the issues caused by the lack of it. By tapping into the three other senses, brands can access more opportunities to engage with customers. And that’s exactly what multi-sensory marketing is about — increasing engagement in innovative ways. The daily environment is becoming more techenabled, requiring brands to follow suit or risk becoming part of the 90% of business failures that occur due to poor marketing. This ‘fifth paradigm’ of marketing, as Rajamannar calls it, involves all senses. It allows brands to provide large amounts of information through immersive experiences that create brand awareness in an organic way. Multi-sensory marketing creates
In fact, limitless possibilities for brands. For example, Mastercard has opened restaurants in Brazil, New The daily York, and Rome. These restaurants, environment while heavily branded with is becoming more Mastercard Priceless imagery, are tech-enabled, top-rated. A delicious dinner with requiring brands to great service forges a connection follow suit or risk in the client’s mind between the becoming part of concept of high-quality and the the 90% of business Mastercard product. failures that occur due to poor Trust And Purpose A growing trust deficit is another influential factor that affects consumer behavior. The Edelman Trust Barometer, a measure based on the results of an annual survey of over 36,000 respondents in 28 countries, reported that twothirds of people don’t trust brands. Consumers trust brands that act with
transparency and integrity, employ ethical practices, and those that are driven by purpose. In fact, according to Rajamannar, purpose driven companies outperform others by 42%. “People are willing to pay more for products from brands that they trust,” explained Rajamannar. In times of uncertainty, such as during the height of COVID-19, brands need to act sensitively and show their support.
One way Mastercard did this was by collaborating with Waze and grocery chain Carrefour. Virtually everyone was afraid to go out because of the risk of contamination, but unfortunately grocery delivery was not available to everyone. With every trip to the grocery store, people were putting themselves at risk of infection. To combat this, the Waze app notified users of nearby grocery stores with low traffic, allowing them to shop with peace of mind. Through the collaboration, Mastercard helped to protect consumers while increasing revenue during what would normally be low hours. “When there is economic uncertainty, don’t sell, serve. Play the long game and profits will follow,” Rajamannar said.
2 Fed officials favor keeping key rate at peak through 2023
Financial markets could be underestimating the Fed’s aggressiveness
Christopher Rugaber –The Associated Press
when it next meets in mid-December. Though that would represent a reduction in the size of its rate hikes, Fed officials have stressed that they expect to keep their key rate at a historically high level well into the future. Because the Fed’s benchmark rate influences many consumer and business loans, its aggressive series of hikes have made most loans throughout WASHINGTON — Two Federal Reserve officials said Monday that they favor raising the Fed’s key rate to roughly 5% or more and keeping it at its peak through next year — the economy sharply more expensive. That has been particularly true of mortgage rates, which have risen dramatically over the past year and have severely crimped home sales. On Wednesday, Powell is scheduled to address the Fed’s policies and their effects on the job market in a speech in Washington. In an interview with Marketwatch, Bullard longer than many on Wall Street have expected. suggested that the speed of the Fed’s rate hikes isn’t John Williams, president of as important as the ultimate the Federal Reserve Bank of New level of its benchmark rate, York, who is among a core group of officials around Chair Jerome In fact, which he said could exceed the 5% that financial markets have Powell, said in a speech to the priced in. Economic Club of New York that “Markets are underpricing the the central bank has “more work to do” to reduce inflation closer to its 2% target. And James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, suggested that financial markets are underestimating the likelihood Financial markets have projected that the Fed will have to reverse course and start cutting rates by next September. risk that the (Fed) will have to be more aggressive rather than less aggressive in order to contain the very substantial inflation that we have,” Bullard said. The central bank, he added, will likely have to keep its the Fed will have to be more benchmark rate above 5% all aggressive in its fight against through 2023 and into 2024. He the worst inflation bout in four also reiterated his view that the decades. Fed should be prepared to raise The Fed has raised its benchmark short-term that rate to the “lower end” of a range between 5% rate six times this year, to a range of 3.75% to 4%, and 7%. with each of the last four hikes being a historically By contrast, financial markets have projected that large three-quarters of a point. The central bank is the Fed will have to reverse course and start cutting expected to raise rates by an additional half-point rates by next September, presumably in response to a recession that many economists expect will occur next year. Williams suggested that there are some positive signs that inflation is easing, noting falling prices for lumber, oil, and other commodities. Supply chains are also loosening, he said: A measure of supply chain snarls maintained by the New York Fed has declined by three-quarters from its pandemic peak. Yet the job market has stayed stronger than he expected, Williams said, with the unemployment rate, at 3.7%, still near a half-century low. “That argues that we’ll need to have a somewhat higher path for interest rates” than the Fed projected in September, Williams said. At that time, the officials forecast that their benchmark rate would reach a range of 4.5% to 4.75% by early next year. He said he now expects the unemployment rate to rise to 4.5% to 5% by the end of next year, with inflation falling to 3% to 3.5% by then. At that level, inflation would still exceed the Fed’s target of 2%, thereby extending its inflation fight into 2024, Williams said.
Markets are underpricing the risk that the (Fed) will have to be more aggressive rather than less aggressive in order to contain the very substantial inflation that we have.
James Bullard, president St. Louis Fed
Empty streets, cranes: the city built for Qatar’s World Cup
Questions are raising about how much use the infrastructure will get after the event
Suman Naishadham – The Associated Press
LUSAIL, Qatar — Less than a month before it was set to host the World Cup final, Lusail City was oddly quiet. Wide empty streets, idle lobbies and construction cranes are everywhere in the sleek district 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital,
Doha, built to accommodate World Cup fans and A municipal worker walks in a street in Lusail downtown, Qatar,. >AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin hundreds of thousands of host nation Qatar’s residents. But with soccer’s biggest event underway, the empty futuristic city is raising questions about how much use the infrastructure Qatar built for the event will get after more than a million soccer fans leave the small Gulf Arab nation after the tournament. Elias Garcia, a 50-year old business owner from
San Francisco, visited Lusail City from Doha with a friend on a day when there wasn’t a soccer game in the city’s bowl-shaped, golden stadium. “We came to check it out but there’s not much here,” Garcia said, looking up at a huge crescent-shaped skyscraper behind him designed to look like the curved swords on Qatar’s national emblem. Across the street, a building site was concealed by a low fence illustrated with desert scenes. “Everything looks like it’s under construction,” Garcia said. “It’s just empty lots with little walls they put up to make you think it’s up and running.” Driving north from Doha, Lusail City’s glittering skyline and marina are hard to miss. Pastel-colored towers that look like crates stacked on each other rise from the desert. Wide avenues give way to zigzagging buildings, glass domes and clusters of neoclassical housing blocks. It’s unclear if anyone lives in them. Most are advertised as luxury hotels, apartments or commercial office space. Cranes hang above many buildings. Plans for Lusail City had been around since 2005 but construction was fast-tracked after Qatar won the rights to host the World Cup five years later. Backed by Qatar’s $450 billion sovereign wealth fund, the city was designed to be compact and pedestrian friendly and is connected by Doha’s new metro and a light rail. Fahad Al Jahamri, who manages projects at Qatari Diar, the real estate company behind the city that’s backed by Qatar’s Investment Authority, has called Lusail City a self-contained “extension of Doha.” Officials have also said the city is part of broader plans that natural gas-rich Qatar has to build its knowledge economy — an admission of the type of white-collar professionals the country hopes to attract to the city long-term. But reaching its goal of housing 400,000 people in Lusail City could be tough in a country where only 300,000 people are citizens, and many of the 2.9 million residents are poor migrants who live in camps, not luxury towers. Even during the World Cup, Lusail City is noticeably quieter than Doha, itself the site of jawdropping amounts of construction over the past decade in preparation for the event. At the Place Vendome, a luxury mall named for the grand Parisian square, many stores are not yet open. A few tourists snapped pictures of Lusail City’s skyline on a recent afternoon from the Even on the metro, if you go on a day when there’s not a match, there are like five to 10 people on it besides you. Elias Garcia, In fact, business owner visiting Qatar mall while cashiers talked among themselves. At a building downtown housing the Ministry of Culture Officials have also and other government offices, a security guard said the city is part said almost everyone had left by 11 a.m. of broader plans “Even on the metro, if you go on a day when that natural gas-rich there’s not a match, there are like five to 10 people Qatar has to build its on it besides you,” Garcia said. knowledge economy. On the man-made Al Maha Island, a crowd of World Cup fans and locals lounged at an upscale beach club, pulling on shisha tobacco pipes and dipping into a swimming pool. Timothe Burt-Riley directed workers at an art gallery opening later that night. The French gallery director said Lusail City – or at least Al Maha Island with its amusement park, high-end boutiques, restaurants and lounges, would be a place where locals come to meet. “This is a totally man-made island,” Burt-Riley said, “it’s pretty crazy what they can do.” He said Qatar could find a way to make use of the infrastructure it’s built for the World Cup, including seven new soccer stadiums, but admitted, “it might take time.”
