Sensory Marketing is Having a Moment as Food Aesthetics Take Over Beauty

By Rhea Arora

THE SPARK ???

Sensory marketing is all the rage; and we’re seeing a particularly huge wave of food-related tastes, scents and textures in beauty marketing. While beauty brands have always relied on sweet treats to name flavours and write product descriptions (remember the EOS Strawberry Sorbet?), food sensory marketing is now overt and, in some cases, even a brand’s central identity. Hailey Bieber capitalised on the “glazed donut” trend for her brand Rhode, the “strawberry girl”, “blueberry nails” and “jelly makeup” looks took over social media, and even India-forward brands like Gush Beauty, indē wild, and d'you are leaning into the culinary world to market their products.

THE DRIVERS ??

Fourth dimension. Using packaging and communications to evoke smells and textures adds another layer to your brand that can help differentiate it. It’s no longer enough to sell high-quality products – brands must also make you feel something. Summoning familiar sensations – like SleepyCat does with its Marshmallow Pillow – allows your customers to create emotional, personalised and real-world references or associations to your brand.

Viral micro-trends. Coining a microtrend is the easiest way to go viral in 2025 when our attention spans and content creation and consumption cycles are shorter than ever. From the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic to ‘mob wife winter’, short-lived algorithmic-driven aesthetics are easy to buy into especially when younger audiences experience high rates of FOMO.

Repackaged Nostalgia (again). Multisensory branding has always been successful – think soap strips, scratch-and-sniff stickers, ASMR, and signature store scents. In beauty, millennials and Gen X will remember Lanc?me’s Juicy Tubes, Lip Smackers’s Dr Pepper lip balm, St. Ives’s Apricot Scrub and Bath and Body Works’ vanilla everything. It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing a resurgence in food aesthetics in beauty just as a wave of ’90s and 2000s nostalgia sweeps over social media.

THE MOVE ??

?Microdosing indulgence. At the core of the success of food marketing in beauty is the proximity to indulgence. Dessert, candy, and even ingredients like butter, honey, and whipped cream signal richness, sinfulness, extravagance, comfort. Capitalising on the ‘cheat day’ or ‘forbidden fruit’ mentality in packaging and communications can help brands be more subversive while also making their customers feel good without feeling guilty.

Whimsical collaborations. Take cues from brands like E.L.F that teamed up with Chipotle to create a limited edition avocado and salsa themed collection or Vaseline that launched the Hershey’s Kisses Lip Tin. Fashion label Kate Spade collaborated with M&M’S to create playful jewellery and even Papa John’s launched a garlic bath bomb. The era of professional, serious beauty – cut creases, contouring, baking – is over. We’re all about fun now.

Context is key. While food aesthetics can be playful and fun gimmicks to lean into, brands should also be mindful of the cultural (racial and gendered) implications of their communication choices.