Smelling Pleasures: A Glance at Scent Branding and Marketing

 
Stores, products, companies, and public spaces – all have become a paradise of smells. Desiring to buy a fresh pair of shoes? Upon entering Foot Locker stores in Europe, the scent of newly purchased sneakers will perhaps attract your nostrils enough for you to make a purchase. Do you dream of taking a cross-country road trip? The smell of “Citrus Flavored Summer” in Fiat 500 vehicles might entice you to select this car as your adventuring companion. Whatever the cause, a powerful business trend in a sector of sense marketing – scent branding – has swept throughout companies in recent years.

Using scent to affect perception is not a new phenomenon. People have used perfumes to transform their presentation, mask their odors and to enhance their interaction for years.  However, according to marketing experts, brand communication is 80% audio and visual (Vogt, 2008; web). Martin Lindstrom, in book Brand Sense: Build powerful brands through touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound, critiques this, arguing that 75 percent of all the emotions we generate every day come from smell. He states, “Through our research, we’ve seen that we’re not only able to change consumers’ impression of a brand, we can also change consumers’ perception of time, size and quality" (Lindstrom 2005). With little attention given to smell, an omnipresent sense, it is no surprise that marketers, in their drive to innovate memorable brand experiences, are taking advantage of the power of scent to strike emotional connections with people, places and things. As stated by Robert Klara in his article, "Good marketing ideas have a way of sticking around" (Klara, 2012; web). Scent, then seems to provide an avenue.

Thus, the goal and aim of scent branding in businesses is to not only garner the attention of customers, but also to evoke a certain “feel”. For example, by employing candles at every table at a restaurant, a sense of warmth and romanticism is evoked to food connoisseurs, which may directly impact their overall experience there. By using this marketing technique, the restaurant is not only bringing families and loved ones together, but also making more sales because those who enjoy having meals in such an atmosphere will continue coming back, and share their memorable experiences there with others.

Because marketers strongly believe that ambient scents in stores enhance a brand’s image and have the power to intimately connect with the consumer, scent branding has become a popular practice among corporations over the years. When our olfactory receptors transfer the scents into our limbic system, our brain then elicits certain emotions and memories, which can then influence consumer behavior and decision-making in stores. Based off of past experiences and research, businesses have used different scents to appeal to specific target markets. By doing this, they have successfully lured (and will continue doing so) their customers to linger longer and buy their merchandise.

Scents have also become a pivotal factor in establishing brand and product identity. The use of a consistent smell to represent a product line or company can serve as both a means of attracting customers and as a means of creating a lasting emotional connection between the brand and consumer. This becomes extremely important in today’s marketplace where consumer impressions are increasingly tougher to get. Distinct smells associated with products can become a point of differentiation from competitors. Well-branded scents can open up  an opportunity for companies to build an image and brand in line with the emotions their scent evokes. The brand can therefore become more dynamic as it creates a much more fulfilling experiences for customers.

In a more macroscopic sense, marketing ambient-scent does not focus on one product, but rather on one location.  Large and spacious areas become arenas for companies marketing towards armies of consumers.  Places like hotels, gyms, spas, and casinos all utilize ambient-scent marketing. Companies like ScentAir create unique scents for their clients to circulate throughout the property or wherever needed to get the desired effect on the consumers olfactory receptors.  By creating a mood-specific (usually relaxed) environment through ambient-scent and aromatherapy, companies like British Airways and Westin hotels touch on smell’s connection with memory.  They have created a link that imparts memories of a relaxing image of their brand in the mind of the consumer through a familiar smell.

With the ability of odor to lure customers by delving into their minds, smell as a marketing model sounds incredibly effective for companies, stores and entities. However, such a model becomes potentially problematic when technology allows for the artificial engineering of smell and with increased reliance on fragrances. Thus, scent branding, similar to logo branding , holds ethical dimensions. The ethical battleground for scent marketing is complex and can be considered in multiple aspects.
Ultimately, next time you step into a store, you should pay attention to the pleasurable smell that enters your nose, and be aware of what it is trying to evoke in you. To explore scent branding, we will look at: scent marketing techniques, branding unique scents, ambient scents, and the ethics of this fragrance branding.

By Sharon Wu, Tony Huynh, Justin Gabbert, Jimmie Bryce


References


Klara, Robert. "Something In The Air". Adweek. n.d., 5 March 2012. Web. 6 May 2012.


Lindstrom, Martin and Philip Kotler (2005). Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.


Vogt, Harald. "The Sweet Scent of Smell Marketing". Branding Strategy Insider. The Blake Project, 2008. Web. 6 May 2012.