The Forgotten Senses: Imagination Marketing
Picture yourself walking down a street filled with billboards. Every surface scream for your attention with bold fonts and bright colors. Yet somehow, you remember none of them by the time you reach home. Now picture this: you're walking past a bakery, and suddenly the unmistakable aroma of fresh bread stops you mid-stride. Twenty years later, that smell still triggers the memory. This is the difference between telling and showing—between traditional marketing and what Robert Rose famously described when he said, "Marketing is telling the world you are a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one."
The Five-Sense Blind Spot - Most businesses and communities pour their resources into visual marketing: billboards, social media graphics, website banners. They're obsessed with reaching "as many sets of eyes as possible." But here's the problem—humans don't experience the world through their eyes alone. We have five senses, and research consistently shows that the so-called "neglected senses" often prove more powerful than vision.
Consider the music industry's understanding of this principle. When you hear the opening notes of your favorite song from high school, your brain doesn't just process sound—it recreates entire scenes. The Olympic fanfare doesn't just announce an event; it conjures feelings of triumph, competition, and national pride without a single word. Restaurants have known this secret for generations. The carefully crafted menu descriptions matter far less than the sizzle of a steak hitting the grill or the aroma of fresh coffee that hits you the moment you walk through the door. Real estate agents who bake cookies before showings aren't being hospitable—they're being strategic. That smell transforms four walls and a roof into a home in ways that square footage and granite countertops never could.
The Sixth Sense of Imagination - But there's something even more powerful than these five physical senses: imagination. The most effective marketing doesn't just engage your senses—it helps you imagine yourself transformed by the product or experience. The greatest marketing campaigns in history understood this instinctively. The Marlboro Man didn't just sell cigarettes; he sold the fantasy of rugged independence. Nike's Air Jordans weren't just shoes—they were the gap between you and greatness. That impossibly perfect burger in the commercial, with steam rising and cheese melting just so, doesn't make you want to see it. It makes you taste it, crave it, need it.
Consider the psychology behind Coca-Cola's advertising. When you see condensation beading on an ice-cold glass, hear the fizz as it's poured, and watch someone's satisfied expression after that first sip, you're not just observing—you're experiencing. You're imagining that refreshment. This is why people will pay six dollars for a fountain drink they could make at home for pennies.
The Local Application - So what does this mean for your business or community? It means you need to stop simply listing features and start creating experiences—even in your marketing. If your town calls itself "musical," visitors shouldn't just read that claim on a website. They should hear live music spilling from every corner, see instruments in shop windows, and feel the rhythm in the very culture of your streets. The music should be so embedded in the experience that visitors imagine themselves returning, perhaps even living there.
If your community promotes itself as a barbecue destination, every marketing touchpoint should make mouths water. Your social media shouldn't just show photos of ribs—it should help people taste the smoke, feel the sauce's sticky sweetness, and imagine themselves loosening their belts after the best meal of their lives. This is what separates branding from marketing. Branding tells people what you are. Marketing—real, effective imagination marketing—shows them and makes them feel it in their bones.
The Bottom Line - Everyone has an opinion about marketing and branding. Every stakeholder wants their "two-cents." But most of those opinions focus on the wrong metrics: impressions, reach, clicks. These numbers matter, but they're not the goal—they're just measurements of how many people you've reached, not how many you've moved. True imagination marketing doesn't chase minnows with tiny hooks. It sets out quality bait capable of landing the big fish—customers who don't just visit once but become advocates, telling everyone they know about the experience they had.
Your marketing should help people imagine themselves transformed: healthier, happier, more fulfilled, more connected. Whether you're selling a product, a service, or an entire community, the question isn't how many eyes you can reach. It's how many hearts and imaginations you can capture. Don't just tell the world what you are. Show them. Better yet, help them imagine what they could become by experiencing what you offer. That's the essence of marketing that actually works.
John A. Newby is the author of the "Building Main Street, Not Wall Street" column dedicated to helping local communities, government and business combine synergies allowing them to thrive in a world where truly-local is being lost to Amazon and Wall Street chains. His email is john@truly-local.org