Let’s daydream for a minute. Think about the best concerts, plays, sporting events, and other types of entertainment you’ve been to. Try to put yourself back in that venue, into the crowd, immersed in the noise and the hype, and think about all the separate stimuli you can remember. Chances are the shows you’re reliving have a few sensory elements in common. Great music, fun light shows, interesting visuals or sets, maybe even well-designed scripts and costumes. All of these parts combine to create the invigorating thrill of high-quality entertainment.

But why should that excitement be limited to the entertainment world? Here at Mood, we believe you can excite the senses and create a memorable customer experience in your own business – whether it’s a retail store, restaurant, bank, or hotel. Your customers are your audience, and through experience design solutions in audio, video, digital signage, and even scent, you can entertain your customers and entice them into your location again and again.

Marketers in both the retail and entertainment industries are appealing to their audience’s senses with inspiring results. At ScentWorld 2014, a marketing conference celebrating businesses that use customers’ sense of smell to enhance their brand, men’s clothing retailer DXL won the award for “Most Innovative Use of Scent Marketing.” That’s right, DXL intentionally used a citrus scent, custom-designed by Mood Media and ScentAir, in its stores as part of a vast rebranding and redesign campaign, and it worked.

The last time this award was given, at ScentWorld 2013, it went to country music superstar Shania Twain in recognition of her use of scent during her “Shania: Still the One” concert series in Las Vegas. DXL’s 2014 reception of this award proves that innovative entertainment design such as this is not reserved for the entertainment industry. Retail marketers can, and should, begin to embrace it too.

You can incorporate these elements of entertainment into your brand to give it a memorable personality for consumers. Update your decade-old music playlist. Add visual interest through digital signage, great for both dynamic advertisements and environmental graphics. Maybe you want your brand to have a characteristic scent; after all, scent is more connected to memory than any other sense.

Not sure where to start? Come talk to us. Mood has all of these solutions and more to help your company create a fresh Experience by Design.

Join the conversation! What design tips do you use to entertain your audience? What innovative elements would you like to incorporate in the future? Let us know in the comments below – we love to hear from you.

– Submitted by Samantha Knowlton, Marketing