For centuries, now, people have been excited by the possibility of meaningfully matching musical notes with tastes, flavours and perfumes (see Huxley, 1932; Huysmans, 1884; Piesse, 1862/1891, for early examples). However, until recently, it has never been clear whether such surprising crossmodal matches reflected anything more than the idle fancies of the creative minds who came up with them (a
... [Show full abstract] kind of idiosyncratic synaes-thesia if you will). Over the last few years, though, cognitive neuroscien-tists have started to demonstrate that many of these crossmodal correspondences (sometimes called synaesthetic mappings) are actually remarkably robust (that is, shared by the majority of people within a community). As such, the opportunity arises to start scientifically developing music and soundscapes that correspond crossmodally to the tastes, flavours and fragrances of that which they are supposed to be associated On Crossmodal Correspondences and the Future of Synaesthetic Marketing 42 with. Perhaps unsurprisingly, sensory marketers are becoming increasingly excited by the possibilities associated with synaesthetic marketing.