The Sensory Advantage

25/04/2026

Rather than fatigue or your nose getting tired, you are adapting to your environment.

This happens peripherally when your olfactory receptors become overstimulated by a certain odour. They begin to shut down.

It also happens centrally when your brain begins to turn down the volume on an odour it deems as being part of your background, and therefore is less important for survival. This is also called habituation.

The only remedy is to remove yourself from that environment for a period of time.

The fascinating part is that these adaptations start within 200 milliseconds of being exposed to an odour!

24/04/2026

If flavour is a product attribute, why can't we measure it?

We can measure molecules. We can measure formulation. We can capture sensory data. And AI can predict the human response.

But the only part of flavour we can measure is the experience of it. This is because flavour is a cognitive construct.

While it's easy to dismiss the reality of flavour perception, approaching flavour as an experience rather than a product attribute enables teams to think beyond formulation and implement frameworks that track the full sensory episode - from framing and expectation to consumption and memory creation.

23/04/2026

Sensory assessments operate within a small time window.

Often a product's sensory properties are captured like taking a photo.

But a product's success is not determined within a brief moment of consumption. It's story is far greater than that.

Framing sets the scene though environment, context, and occasion, plus through physiological and psychological state too.

This is followed by the brain's predictions of what to expect where the blueprint for the experience is created.

Consumption layers the sensory inputs.

And finally, the after effects drive memorability, distinctiveness, and repeat behaviour.

Viewing a product through a video lens rather than through a polaroid lens (remember those?) creates a clearer, more informed perspective that reduces risk, cuts cost, and strengthens market success.

21/04/2026

We like numbers because they feel like certainty. They feel tangible.

Light has a range, and sound has a range, so we instinctively look for the same in flavour.

But flavour doesn’t behave like a signal. There's no fixed scale. No spectrum. And no wavelengths. Just perception, shaped by expectation, context, and memory.

We can measure congeners, molecules, and volatiles. But for them to make sense in the context of flavour, they must be experienced by an individual. An individual who has a brain, and to-do lists, and deadlines, and stress, and laughter, and everything else that makes them human.

Flavour is always experienced within a context that becomes part of the experience.

19/04/2026

Smell (and therefore flavour) are not properties a product inherently contains, but something the brain constructs in response to it.

What exists in the product are stimuli such as volatile compounds, tastes, and textures, which trigger sensory signals. These signals are then interpreted through a combination of memory, context, expectation, and other sensory inputs.

Furthermore, such expectations create the experience as a prediction before our chemical senses are stimulated. The incoming sensory information will be adjusted against that prediction.

As a result, the same product can produce different experiences depending on the individual and the situation. In this sense, smell and flavour are not intrinsic properties of the product, but outcomes of the interaction between the product and the perceiver.

Take a look at the comments if you would like to explore this further.

18/04/2026

Aroma and flavour wheels have become standard accompaniments to tastings and visitor centres around the world.

But while they may bring short-term benefits, their long-term helpfulness is debatable.

This is because flavour wheels were designed as an industrial tool, rather than a consumer tool. The difference being that the industrial setting requires limited, consistent, and pre-agreed lexicons, whilst the consumer setting does not.

However, they give structure to something messy, reduce the effort of describing flavour, and help people feel more confident. That matters. When people feel capable, they engage more.

But there’s a trade-off we don’t talk about enough.

Aroma wheels don’t just organise perception… they shape it.

They act as anchors. The moment you see 'vanilla' or 'smoke,' your brain leans in that direction before you’ve fully experienced the liquid. What feels like description can become suggestion.

They also compress a very high-dimensional experience into a handful of tidy labels. Useful for communication, but it risks sanding down the edges where individuality lives.

And once labels exist, people start treating them as 'correct.' The upshot is that other labels become 'incorrect' and consumers find themselves looking up at a hierarchical ladder of expertise.

So are aroma wheels useful for consumers or are they a lazy shortcut?

What do you think?

15/04/2026

The experience doesn't end once your glass is empty.

To your nonconscious mind, time doesn't exist. We know this because there is much overlap between the neural circuits used to process memories and the ones that imagine future experiences.

Hence the difference between what you remember and what you imagine can be smaller than you think.

So projecting a product's success in the marketplace based on in-the-moment feedback misses something important.

Future behaviour, which is central to a product's success, is determined by much more than molecules alone. It's the whole journey from psychological cues and physiological state, through expectation, and to sensory clarity and coherence. Each of these metrics has a predictable outcome, which when combined, give us the after effect i.e. the residual state the product leaves behind in the nonconscious mind.

The Sensory Advantage is not about improving products in a general sense. It is about identifying where experience breaks, understanding the mechanisms behind those failures, and making targeted changes that improve real-world performance. By focusing on how products are actually perceived over time, it connects sensory design directly to commercial outcomes such as reducing risk, improving efficiency, strengthening liking, and driving both repeat and re-selection behaviour.

13/04/2026

𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆 & 𝗣𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲 is where a technically 'good' product can fail.

It's because it doesn't know what job it's supposed to do.

At its centre, this The Sensory Advantage pillar is about whether the product expresses a recognisable identity, at a strength that matches its role. But not every product should stand out in the same way.

• 𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 should feel immediately familiar and trustworthy. If it’s too distinctive, it creates friction i.e. people hesitate because it doesn’t match what they expect the category to be.

• 𝗔 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝗴𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 needs to be clearly more expressive. It should amplify something specific such as flavour, texture, or character in a way that feels intentional, not accidental. If it plays too safe, it disappears. If it pushes too far without control, it becomes polarising.

• 𝗔 𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 can afford to be more extreme or unconventional, but it still needs a recognisable anchor. If consumers can’t place it, they won’t know how to engage with it.

Where teams go wrong is treating identity as a branding problem, rather than an experiential signal. For example when:

• The first sip doesn’t confirm what the product claims to be.
• The intensity is mismatched to its intended role.
• It either blends into the category or sticks out in the wrong way.

From a performance perspective, this shows up as:

• Slower uptake (people don’t 'get it')
• Misaligned expectations (increased cognitive friction)
• Weak repeat activity (because the experience doesn’t land as intended)

The practical question isn’t '𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥?'

It’s: '𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦, 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭?'

When Identity & Role is right, the product feels self-evident. But when it’s wrong, everything else has to work harder to compensate.

While nose, plate, and finish has become the doctrine for assessing drinks, if we shift our metrics to assess the principles behind a successful product, we achieve a more commercially beneficial data set.

10/04/2026

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07/04/2026

I recently had the chance to sit down and talk about flavour, specifically in the context of whisky, with the amazing Tristan on The Curious Bartender Podcast.

Hats off to Tristan for being so professional, he had a really nice set-up. But to me, from my position of naivety, it did feel like being on a film set! However, a number of cask strength drams seemed to help the nerves.

Regardless, it was a really fun conversation, albeit over 3 hours in total. If you're interested in viewing flavour through a more progressive lens, perhaps you'll enjoy it too.

Any feedback appreciated.

Kami Newton is a flavour expert, sensory analyst, and founder of Sensory Advantage, whose career took him from wine shelves at Oddbins to leading tasting pan...