Mastercard is opening restaurants, selling perfume and cocktails in its flagship colors, and playing a signature tune at the cash register — all to engage customers' five senses with representations of its brand.

Why it matters: Multisensory marketing is a hot concept in corporate branding, as companies seek to go beyond traditional advertising and PR stunts.

Driving the news: Mastercard has been at the forefront of the multisensory branding push, rolling out initiatives aimed at conveying the scent, sound and flavor of its name and "Priceless" tagline.

• Sight: The Mastercard logo was refashioned to become more symbolic, with the company name removed and the overlapping red-and-yellow circles repositioned.
• Taste: Mastercard introduced red-and-yellow Ladurée macarons and cocktails — and it's opened half-a-dozen restaurants in New York, Hong Kong, Rome and elsewhere, with more on the way.
• Smell: The aroma of Mastercard is meant to be encapsulated in two fragrances, Priceless Passion and Priceless Optimism — which come in red and yellow bottles, respectively.
• Sound: Mastercard's "sonic brand" is a 1.3-second ditty that plays at 590 million point-of-sale terminals when a Mastercard transaction is completed.
• Touch: Credit, debit and prepaid cards with distinctive notches in them — known as touch cards — are aimed at people with visual impairments.

What they're saying: "The theory is that a normal human being is blessed with five senses," Mastercard chief marketing officer Raja Rajamannar tells Axios.

• "Each sense is a mechanism by which information goes into the individual's brain, [they] processes it, and then they either think, feel, act or do something with it."
• "Marketing people have only historically relied on the sense of sight and the sense of sound, and they were doing it in a highly intuitive rather than a scientific fashion."

To change that, Mastercard began evaluating its logo scientifically to find the most eye-pleasing colors and proportions.

• "We actually did study the golden ratio, and we said, 'This is the extent of overlap there has to be between the two circles,'" says Rajamannar, author of a book called "Quantum Marketing."
• His team adjusted the shades of red and yellow, and removed the Mastercard name and all heavy lines.
• The streamlined symbol "instantly became a big hit when we launched it," he says.

Zoom out: Multisensory branding has become an academic discipline in business schools — and a recognized technique among marketers.

• New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, for example, allows students to minor in the subject — which it calls "the art and science of engaging human senses holistically."

Landor, the major branding consultancy, has also doubled down on the trend.

• "The future will embrace a multisensorial approach to brand building," Gabriel Miller, Landor's president for North America, wrote for The Drum, a marketing trade publication.
• "This means that agencies must invest in more than just design as brands are no longer confined to a visual identity alone."
• Landor, for instance, owns amp, which has created "sonic brands" for Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, Philadelphia cream cheese, BMW and others.

Case study: American Express developed a sonic brand with Made Music Studio, an amp competitor.

• It's meant for AmEx's airport Centurion Lounges and sponsored events like Coachella and the U.S. Open.

Zoom in: Mastercard recently held a media dinner at one of its half-a-dozen restaurants, Peak with Priceless, which is on the 101st floor of 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan.

• The exquisite menu and breathtaking views are meant to evoke the kinds of experiences the "Priceless" branding campaign is based on.

What's next: Mastercard plans to get "deeper and stronger in multisensory marketing," Rajamannar says.

• "In this journey we are fairly nascent," he adds. "Many other companies haven't even figured out how to do this."

Share this story.

Tesla shareholders endorsed Elon Musk's compensation plan in a vote that could pave the way for him to get back the $56 billion pay package he had temporarily lost.

Why it matters: A Delaware judge ruled in January that Tesla's board had not properly constructed or disclosed the details of the CEO's pay deal when it was initiated in 2018.

Driving the news: Shareholders supported both Musk's compensation and his plan to reincorporate the company in Texas in a move away from Delaware, Tesla general counsel Brandon Ehrhart said at a meeting yesterday.

• After a recent decline in Tesla's stock price, the pay package is now worth about $44.9 billion, according to the Associated Press.

Yes, but: The vote isn't binding.

• Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick will decide whether to allow the plan to be reimplemented, though the shareholder endorsement may ease her concerns.

Go deeper.

New trade restrictions on China are a test of whether the U.S. and Europe can simultaneously pursue strong industrial policy and fight climate change.

Why it matters: America and Europe are looking to speed deployment of renewables and EVs, and China is a huge producer of needed low-cost equipment.

• But Western officials are also keen to boost their domestic climate tech industries.

The latest: The European Union just announced higher tariffs — up to 38% — on Chinese EVs, just weeks after the White House announced 100% tariffs on them.

Context: Chinese EVs have yet to gain a real beachhead in the U.S., though China's exports to Europe have surged in recent years.

What we're watching: Analysts are tracking whether trade friction affects EV sales growth, which is slowing in key markets.

Go deeper.

Phoenix is "the most American city," journalist and author George Packer declares — and cautions — in a new Atlantic cover story.

The big picture: After eight months of reporting, Packer paints a picture of a city chock-full of progress, partisanship and peril.

• He explores the state's impending water crisis, embrace of extremism, explosive population growth and the "sheer hubris" of its existence.

Packer's account of modern-day Phoenix is presented against the area's centuries-long fight over water and the fall of its first civilization: the Hohokam Indians, who disappeared in the 15th century for still-unknown reasons.

• He also spoke with a local family caught up in broken immigration, health care and education systems, and with residents of the city's outskirts whose wells have dried up.
• And he underlines how the hyperbolic rhetoric and culture wars that dominate today's political discourse are lightyears away from the actual issues threatening everyday Arizonans.

The bottom line: Packer ends with a drive he took to a ranch in Gila County, where the Sierra Ancha mountains blocked the Phoenix metropolis from sight.

• It was a relief to spend a whole day away from "the strip malls, the air-conditioned traffic, the swimming pool subdivisions … the endless fights in empty language over elections and migrants and schools and everything else," he writes.
• "But now I realized that I was ready to go back. That was our civilization down in the Valley, the only one we had. Better for it to be there than gone."

Go deeper.