W Hotels recently announced (see Variety link) hiring a music director to get the edgy hotel chain back to its origins of mixing hotel and entertainment. What once was a commodity business measured by "heads in beds" is now a dynamic enterprise of multiple brand extensions offering "lifestyle" lodging with experiences orchestrated to deliver to all the senses.

What's more important to note about this paradigm shift in the lodging industry is that while underway for more than a decade, it is organic and ever changing. It's not an interior design remodel that enables a hotel to maintain their footing, it's much more substantive and far reaching than a mere face-lift.

What's happening in the hospitality sector has applications and relevance for a variety of categories, providing valuable insight to empower marketing and brand managers to assess their entire customer experience; to create or "tune-up" the sensory experience.  BRAND sense agency, headed by marketing genius Martin Lindstrom, specializes in working with major companies to develop their "sensory branding."

Integration is at the heart of a sensory make over. Your sensory experiences should be layered and woven into the hard programming and infrastructure of your physical space, service and amenities to create a total experience. This allows your brand to achieve a more evolved and entrenched place in the minds and hearts of your customer. The result can be transformative: rather than simply having customer or brand users of your product or service, you are creating brand loyalists by providing memorable experiences and journeys that become the brand. When done successfully, the added benefit is that these loyalists become brand evangelists spreading the word about "the experience" they had. And the brand gets all the credit.

So, the next time you check into a hotel be sure to look, listen, touch, smell and taste the brand. Hopefully, it will be more memorable than a mint on your pillow.

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