Nothing is better than new athletic shoes. The heady aroma of plastics, elastics, and futuristic non-woven fabrics is better than the smell of new PlayDough, new tennis balls, and even new car. I’m surprised Apple products don’t offer olfactory titillation during “unboxing”. Perhaps they do and it’s too subtle, or maybe the visual and tactile thrill of opening a Mac laptop overwhelms the other senses.
Here are some more examples of scent signals used in marketing. Some are contrived or calculated, some are not, but they all tell a story.
- Fresh baked cookies in an open house.
- Wood burning fireplaces tended all day at high end ski resorts.
- Food: BBQ joints, McDonald’s french fries, coffee brewing, cheese stores, open kitchens, the mild whiff of seaweed and mackerel in sushi places.
- New Car. As with shoes, the scent actually comes from dangerous gases released from unstable adhesives. Yay science!
- Cigar humidors/smoke shops.
- Sawdust at hardware stores and construction sites.
- Horribly annoying magazine perfume ads.
- Perfume departments/Bath & Body shops. Always dreadful and overwhelming. Could a market be built around selling high end cosmetics in a wine tasting/cheese connoisseur manner?
Odd that the fragrance industry totally blows their experience while the industry associated with smelly feet gets the experience perfect. Perfume counters are like a music store that has 14 different artists blaring at the same time. What’s the perfume equivalent of music store listening station headphones?* Someone get on inventing that.
- * At least music retailers did something right before going extinct.
- I just found that Puma Voltaics come in orange and slate. Dibs!