A Whiff of the Past

Our everyday life is experienced using all of our senses. Yet when we learn about the past, it is usually only through the senses of sight and sometimes hearing. But that is about to change, as sensory historians bring smells from the past to life.

Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel told the Boston Globe, "Scents are very much linked to memory. They are linked to remembering the past but also learning from experiences." Historians are now using technology to recreate smells that can give us insight into how people lived their lives. For example, history buffs can discover how women viewed themselves and their femininity in 1927 by sampling the jasmine and leather notes in a popular Chanel perfume and can compare that to today's perfumes to see how their views have changed.

Another perfumer, Roman Kaiser, has been traveling the world to capture the scents of plants that are close to extinction. These scents have been captured and reproduced synthetically by his employer, fragrance house Givaudan. The fragrances can be used commercially, but also can be studied by botanists to give them clues about the evolutionary and ecological journey of that particular plant.

Other perfumers are preserving and recreating scents from the past. One organization in France, Osmotheque, keeps many of these historically important fragrances for posterity. New perfumes can be based from these fragrances, like the perfume Kiss Me Tender, which was inspired by a perfume from the 19th century. Laudamiel is working to bring this historical fragrance project to the US. This cutting edge perfumer will be speaking at ScentWorld this December.

Some historical museums imbue the scents of the time into their exhibits. The Jorvik Viking Center in York, England does just that, exposing visitors to the odors of a fish market and a latrine. Bonn University's Egyptian Museum is working to recreate a pharaoh's perfume from the residue in a 3,500 year old bottle. While it is impossible to know what the people of the past felt or associated with the scents of their time, the addition of fragrance can at least give us a more complete understanding and experience of our history.

Nightclub Scenting Replaces Cigarette Smell

Clubs worldwide are faced with a smelly dilemma. In the old days, nightclubs smelled like cigarette smoke, but in many entertainment venues, smoking has been banned. You might think this is a good thing, since most people agree that cigarette smoke smells bad. However, without the strong masking odor of smoke, a lot of other even less pleasant odors are noticeable including body odor, stale beer and vomit.

Researchers in the Netherlands decided to test how people would respond to ambient scenting in nightclubs since club owners are looking for a solution to their smelly situation. They infused three different scents into separate dance clubs: orange, peppermint and seawater, and compared results to the same clubs in an unscented condition. About 850 young club goers were given short questionnaires asking them to rate the quality of the evening, the music, the club and their feelings.

Consistently, those in the scented environment reported that the music was better, the club was more fun, and their mood was more cheerful than in the unscented clubs. Scent also increased the dancing activity in the clubs. The researchers were surprised to see that there was no significant difference between reactions to the different scents; all of the scents had roughly the same effect.

The scientists concluded that ambient scenting is somthing that nightclub owners can use to differentiate themselves from competitors, increase visitor return rate and boost revenue. Scents should correlate with the lights and music, so that high arousal music is paired with stimulating scent. Some innovative clubs are now using "aroma jockeys" who generate and disperse multiple smells throughout the evening that are congruent with the music that is playing.

Hungry Yet?

A new study, published in the Journal of Texture Studies, has shown that merely showing pictures of food is not sufficient to produce that mouthwatering sensation that causes people to seek food. Although animals, most notably Pavlov's dogs, will salivate at the thought or anticipation of food, researchers found that the same does not hold true for humans.

When it comes to people, a picture alone is not enough to create that craving for food. The reason, according to the scientists, is that a visual representation is not real enough to convince the brain that food is imminent.

What does this mean for marketers?

If you are promoting a restaurant, catering company, grocery store or other food-related product or service, your marketing would be much more effective if you incorporate the sense of smell. There are many different ways to do this, including scented ink, scented paper, scratch 'n sniff technology and scent strips. Contact IAG to see how joining can get you the best price on scent marketing for your food products.

Are Popular Scents Too Feminine?

The top scents used in scent marketing are vanilla, lavender, citrus and florals, and they do work to increase sales. But are they too feminine? Research shows that men and women have different preferences when it comes to scents. Women's sense of smell is also better than that of men.

Scentsy, a flameless candle company, has a line that it markets to men on the premise that men prefer more woodsy, rich aromas instead of lighter floral and fruit smells. The most popular of their men's line is Hemingway, which includes ripe apples, spice, sandlewood and cedar. Their other men's scents are Embers (amber, bergamot and cedar), Route 66 (citrus, herbs and musk), Echo (spice notes, Mediterranean citrus, blood orange and herbs) and Sharp Dressed Man (grapefruit, lemon, eucalyptus and basil).

An American teen has taken it one step further, with a line of candles for men he has created called ManCans. The thirteen-year-old discovered that he couldn't stand the "girly" scents of the candles his sister was sellling for a school fundraiser, so he decided to make his own with manly smells. His scents include bacon, freshly cut grass, and buttered popcorn. He launched his company in November 2010, and so far, has sold 675 candles for $5 each. Keep an eye out for his upcoming scents: pizza, money to burn, cracker jack and dirt.

Sales Are Depressed When Consumers Feel Pigeonholed…But Scent Can Help

A recent study from the University of Minnesota, Yonsei Universtity in Korea, and Concordia University, Montreal found that when consumers are concerned about feeling stereotyped, they buy less. Consumers who are members of a group that are subject to a negative stereotype hesitate to buy from those company representatives who are outside the group.

The study focused on women as the group and brought up the stereotype “women aren’t good at math” before the subjects were to meet with a financial advisor. Sales were lower when these women met with men as opposed to with women. The researchers found that the subjects did not even have to believe in the stereotype themselves, but merely be aware that there was one that they might be judged by.

The experiment was repeated with auto repair and auto purchases with the stereotype of “women don’t know about cars,” with the same result. Subjects reported higher anxiety when meeting with a sales person outside of their group (females), and were reluctant to purchase.

Interestingly, the presence of a soothing scent, in this case vanilla, relieved the subjects’ anxiety and neutralized the anxiety caused by the anticipation of being stereotyped.

The lesson for companies trying to sell to people who may feel pigeonholed? Be proactive and calm their anxieties using scent. You’ll see a big boost to your bottom line!

Can Fragrance Make Us Better People?

A four-week study in the Netherlands found that the scent of oranges calmed violent criminals, and resulted in less aggression and fewer fights.

The head of police social services in Rotterdam, Herma Heester, said: "It's amazing, fighting in the cells has been dramatically reduced and we are using 10 per cent fewer sedation drugs". ("Violent Criminals Calmed by Scent of Oranges" The Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2011)

Another study found that people in scented environments are more likely to help a stranger. When exposed to pleasant odors, such as baking cookies or roasting coffee, people in a large shopping mall were more likely to help someone by retrieving a dropped pen or providing change for a dollar than in an unscented environment. Participants also reported being in a better mood in the presence of scent. (Study: "The Sweet Smell of...Helping: Effects of Pleasant Ambient Fragrance on Prosocial Behavior in Shopping Malls" by Robert A. Baron, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)


The use of scent for social reasons has almost unlimited applications. Imagine using a pleasant scent in preschools to encourage cooperation, in airports to reduce anxiety, and at charity functions to boost fundraising. Scent...it's not just for selling anymore!

Radio Interview with Rachel Herz

Click on the link below to listen to a great radio interview with researcher Rachel Herz, author of Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell.

Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders

Click on the Listen button to stream the audio. You will need a Real Media player to listen; if you do not have one, you can download the player for free at www.real.com.

Scent Marketing Primer

Newly laundered clothes hanging on a clothes lines, chocolate chip cookies that just got out of the oven, vanilla, grass cut just a few hours ago, a pine forest, a rose garden, freshly baked bread, the salty tang of an ocean breeze, cool fresh air on a spring morning... Speaking of all those, are they starting to trigger some sort of pleasant memory or feeling when you smell them?

It's important that you know that smell is a chemical sense that is tied to the emotional center of the brain. One of the most powerful senses, able to not only to make us salivate, attract us to someone or stir our memories, but it can also change our heart rate and other physiological measures. But that's not all - it can also make us open our wallets to buy something.

Using the senses of sight and hearing, businesses all over the world spend millions every year trying to attract new customers via print ads and TV. However, the real savvy businesses out there are also using the sense of smell to persuade their customers to stop, smell and buy the roses, cars, and houses.

One of the fastest growing trends in advertising is scent marketing. And even though it's not fully understood yet by the majority of businesses, the power of scent has already been successfully applied and can be applied to almost every type of product. Real estate agents know that baking bread or chocolate chip cookies during an open house is going to help sell it. And also, chances are that the sudden spike in home sales during the spring is due to the delicious smells of the blooming hyacinths and daffodils.

Many studies from all over the world have shown that a scented environment makes consumer spend more time and money in that location. A recent study in Las Vegas showed that people spent more time more and spent 45% more money in a scented environment than in an unscented one. In another study, consumers rated a product more favorably and were willing to spend more money for it in a scented room, versus the same exact product in an unscented room.

The secret behind scent is that it creates a "flow state" that leads people to temporarily lose their normal sense of time and become totally consumed in the occurring event. It can last up to several minutes.

So how are major companies out there using fragrance to increase sales? Some use scents that are naturally present in the environment like a bakery funneling the scent of baking bread from the oven area to the front of the shop. Those establishments that are not able to capitalize on their innate smells can create an environment with any fragrance their heart desires, through introducing ambient scent.

A pleasant smell puts the customer in a pleasant, buying mood and increases the chance that of becoming a repeat customer. For instance, Omni Hotels pumps a lemongrass and green tea scent into its lobbies and public places. Rolls Royce was seeing a drop off in customer perception of its cars, even though mechanically, they were the same or better. After investigating, they found the source of the dissatisfaction: the smell! Customers associated the smell of the classic 1965 Silver Cloud with quality, and when the Rolls Royces stopped smelling like this, the satisfaction dropped. Now, Rolls Royce has reproduced the smell of the Silver Cloud and they spray it under the seats in all of their new cars to protect their brand.

Similarly, Singapore Airlines has consistently gotten high marks from consumers in part because they use sensorial marketing to immerse passengers in the smell of a bamboo forest as well as lotus flowers. The fragrance is worn by flight attendants and put on hot towels that are handed to passengers before takeoff.

If your business involves any kind of location, whether retail, hospitality, healthcare, or entertainment, it just makes "scents" to incorporate our most powerful sense: the sense of smell.

How Smell Works: Tracing Scent from Nose to Brain

Researchers at Stanford have traced the path that scent takes from nose to brain, for the very first time. In order to find the connection, they actually reverse engineered the pathway, beginning in the brain and backtracking to the olfactory bulb.

Scientists injected two viruses into mouse brains. The first one, a low-grade virus, cleared the way for the other virus to go from the higher centers in the brain, down the connections to the olfactory bulb. They found that most of the nerve pathways connected to the parts of the brain that determined the mice’s like or dislike of the smell originated from the top part of the olfactory bulb. The concentration of neurons there allows a quick reaction when the mouse is exposed to “bad” smells, such as the scent of a predator.

There are also other neurons from all over the olfactory bulb, which are connected to brain areas that process learned responses to odor. Researchers postulate that their scattered locations allow the mice to have “flexibility in learning to avoid or be attracted to new smells.”[1]

They also discovered that each neuron the brain that receives scent information is connected to at least four neurons in the olfactory bulb, each of which receives input from multiple odor receptors. This is how the brain integrates and makes sense out of a number of different smells.

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[1] “The Brain Knows What the Nose Smells, but How? Standford Researchers Trace the Answer,” Stanford University News Service, February 2, 2011, by Sandeep Ravindran