>> Sony uses a vanilla and mandarin aroma in their Sony Style Stores.

>> Abercrombie & Fitch has been using this technique for years; associating their stores with a specific smell.

In a nutshell, SCENT BRANDING is enhancing a brand image through aroma and ScentAir is leading the way. Associate a scent with a product and you unleash emotions and create experiences that stay with the consumer longer. People recall scent with 64% accuracy after a full year (Scent is the closest sense linked to memory). Compare that to 50% visual recall after 3 months and you can understand why companies are trying to add this sense to their marketing strategy.

If our sense of smell is responsible for 80% of what we taste, why wouldn’t an ice-cream store want to pump a waffle-cone scent into the air? Why wouldn’t Doubletree saturate their lobby with the smell of chocolate-chip cookies and then hand you one right out of the oven as you are checking in? I’ll bet that’s the best chocolate-chip cookie you’ve ever eaten.

I remembered when my church used to smell like old wall paper. It was a very distinguishable “old” smell. I hated it. In no way did it make you enjoy that fact that you had just walked into that building. It didn’t smell like excitement. It didn’t smell like energy. It was a “come here and die” smell. Once we remodeled, it disappeared. And now our cafe helps pump a light “coffee” scent through our foyer space.

But here’s the question: What if a church took the experience they are providing seriously and added a scent to help brand those moments into our lives? A fresh white tea or linen scent. Maybe spring shower or lemongrass. Maybe for your Nascar-themed series, you can use ScentAir’s engine exhaust or burning rubber. Maybe that western night could benefit from a little gun smoke and sagebrush in the air. What if your Christmas Eve service smelled like an evergreen forest upon entrance? What if…

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 4:24 am and is filed under Marketing & Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.