The role of objects in a crowed marketplace

The beauty of objects is that they have a natural salience to them. If they didn’t, we’d all be walking into tables, lampposts and, even, people.

Over a lifetime our brains have learnt through experience, building a vast subconscious knowledgebase from our daily interactions with objects. This knowledge becomes hard-wired and automatic, creating a global universal language. Handles say pull; buttons say press.

At Studio Make Believe, we leverage these learned and intuitive behaviours and create objects that solve problems, making brands stand out in even the most crowded marketplace. The beauty of objects is they gain engagement by enhancing experiences, unlike traditional marketing communications that often have to disrupt a category to cut through the noise. 

Our recent work for Jose Cuervo, Ben & Jerry’s and Our London Vodka demonstrated this philosophy in action. We identified broken links in what we call the customer experience chain – a linked series of steps, choices and interactions consumers make pre, during and post purchase - by using our diagnostic process to show how our three clients can add value to their category and customers through enhancing experience.

Objects are the Swiss-army knife of brand engagement. They can utilise and stimulate the creative palate of all five senses.

By approaching crowded markets with a longer-term ‘object’ mentality, you start to create more permanent, ethically developed and responsibly sourced products that are better for people and the planet but also make good commercial sense too. Each of the projects above commercially justified themselves in the short-term through an increase in sales.

One of our case studies delivered an average uplift of 200% over a 52 week UK wide survey, but the real story is that our client is still using the same concept over fourteen years later.

The value of the objects comes from both their long-term durability and an increase in brand advocacy.