Gastromotive dining: Using experiential multisensory dining to engage customers

We live in an ‘experience economy’, in which consumers value the experiences offered by brands in some cases seemingly over the utility of the goods or services they offer. Over the last quarter of a century or so, the world of marketing has seen a clear shift towards a more experiential form of consumer, press, and influencer engagement. It is striking how many brands are currently trying to tap into the power of experiential events/marketing. This shift has led to an increased interest in the delivery of immersive multisensory experiences. Few experiences can tap in to all of the senses quite as effectively as carefully-curated gastronomical encounters. This paper provides a case study exploring the development of one such multisensory dining concept created recently on behalf of a German luxury car brand by the London-based design studio Kitchen Theory. A multi-course multisensory immersive dining experience was developed in which the various courses were designed to mirror, amplify, imitate, illustrate, and/or pair with the key conceptual content contained within a series of emotive branded videos.