Haptic promotion as an emotional anchor for digital messages

The rapid advance of digitalisation with its current AI boom is revolutionising marketing: Autonomous agents are taking on active roles, SEO is evolving into GEO – Generative Engine Optimisation – and AI-powered digital promotion is becoming more context-based, AI-driven and less amenable to manual control. However, this development is prompting a backlash: Multisensory marketing is gaining in importance. Generative AI opens up previously unimagined possibilities for developing digital campaigns using simple means. However, it can be a two-edged sword: Namely, when the texts, images and videos generated in this way are not used as a starting point for the creative development of content, but are misunderstood as a final product – content generated quickly and published en masse, leading to audiovisual sensory overload and lacking emotional depth.

Powerful sensory synergies

People take in their surroundings with all five senses at all times, even when they are ostensibly focusing on just one sense. When reading a book, one automatically feels the quality of the paper when turning the pages. Although conscious attention is directed towards visually taking in the content, the tactile experience is just as much a part of the perception, and influences how the book is valued.

For Klaus Pohn, President of the Association of Austrian Promotional Product Distributors (VÖW), it is this very quality that accounts for the great potential of tactile promotion. Drawing on his many years of experience and the positive results he has seen as a result of multi-sensory marketing with tactile items, this seasoned promotional product professional explains: “If we can touch something, and hold it in our hands, we grasp it both literally and figuratively. We can verify the visual impressions and link them to emotional and cognitive sensations that remain in our memory for longer.” One particular strength of promotional items, Pohn continues, is that they engage multiple senses. Whether visually through colours, shapes and an appealing design, olfactorily through scents emanating from the product, or acoustically through rustling or crackling – combined with the weight of the item, the texture of the surface and the sensation of warmth or coolness, this creates a distinctive synergy that leaves a far stronger impression than a purely audiovisual experience. Klaus Pohn is certain: “This makes promotional items a multi-sensory attention booster that perfectly complements digital and audiovisual forms of marketing. A well-thought-out interplay of all marketing channels thus achieves the strongest and most lasting promotional impact.” Source: VÖW
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