Aesthetic Intelligence: Transforming Your Brand with Visual Appeal

When you see or hear the term AI, I’m guessing you think it stands for artificial intelligence.

It does, of course.

But artificial intelligence isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think about AI.

For me, AI also refers to aesthetic intelligence.

I call aesthetic intelligence the other AI.

It’s a concept that I’ve taught at Harvard Business School in an interdisciplinary course called The Business of Aesthetics. It’s also the subject of my upcoming book.

But enough about me.

Let’s explore aesthetic intelligence — what it is, why it’s important for your business, how it can give you an edge over your competitors, and examples of companies with high aesthetic IQs.

 

What is Aesthetic Intelligence?

Let me start with what aesthetic intelligence is not, because the word aesthetics is loaded with connotations.

I’m not talking about design, although design is important. I’m also not talking about beauty, because sometimes aesthetics can be less than beautiful, at least in the conventional definition of beauty, but still utterly compelling, exciting, and pleasurable.

Aesthetics is the pleasure that we derive from perceiving an object or experience through our senses.

It may include visual beauty, but also appeal to our other senses—like the plush texture of cashmere, the sonorous timbre of an alto’s voice, a scrumptious meal, or an aromatic fragrance.

Aesthetic intelligence isn’t necessarily the ability to create beauty, because that would refer to artistry or creativity.

Aesthetic intelligence is our ability to understand, interpret, and articulate feelings that are elicited by a particular object or experience.

Essentially, aesthetic intelligence is the development of “taste”—the ability to discern what is desirable and why and how to attain it.

When you apply aesthetic intelligence to commerce, things start to get really interesting.

The Intersection of Aesthetic Intelligence and Commerce

Applying aesthetics to a product or service and eliciting the right emotional cues so that consumers are interested in buying it takes a great deal of empathy.

You need to consider not just what arguments you can make—or what words you can use to persuade shoppers to buy your product or service—but what you can do to connect with them on a human level.

We have to remember that people, not machines, buy the vast majority of products and services. People are emotional and make decisions largely based upon how that product or service makes them feel.

In many cases, it takes more than just a digital forum to connect with them on an emotional level.

The cosmetics industry knows this very well.

Many of the best cosmetic brands grew through giving shoppers free samples because they knew that their claims of offering great products were only validated once consumers had the opportunity to experience them—their feel, their smell, their effect on the skin—firsthand.

Whether it was offering a gift with purchases in a department store or even providing testers through magazine sense strips, people responded sensorially, rather than logically, to their products.

Many people became loyal customers during this process.

If you want to differentiate yourself from your ecommerce competitors, you need to start thinking about ways to integrate more of the senses into your own digital business proposition, because the digital environment essentially only touches one and a half of the five senses: strong visuals and modest sound.

Sound doesn’t even get a full vote of confidence in ecommerce because sound quality on a lot of devices is poor compared to listening to state-of-the-art Sonos speakers, for example, so the audible experience of engaging with a brand online is still diluted.

But imagine the difference it would make if you appealed to just one more sense in the course of your customers’ shopping experience—if your competitors were armed with only sights and sounds, but you were able to provide a tactile experience as well.

The playing field would be tipped in your favor.

Applying aesthetic intelligence to your brand can truly be a game-changer, but cultivating and elevating it requires a concerted and deliberate effort.

The first step in developing aesthetic intelligence is to reconnect with your senses and to unblock some of the things that we tend to block for the purpose of survival.

Once you start receiving and experiencing those inputs again, the second step is to begin to decipher and develop a point of view—much like you do in other parts of your life about how different elements can come together.

Then you have to edit and curate these aesthetic inputs, which is equally important, or else the experience will be muddled and overwhelming.

When you add ecommerce to the equation, the concept of aesthetic intelligence can become really challenging because the goal isn’t just to provide customers with a great experience in the moment.

The goal is to build anticipation for a great experience and to leave customers with great memories of the experience. We refer to this as “the halo effect” of great aesthetics.