It sits right in the middle of your face, comes in every imaginable shape and is the key to success: the nose. You can bury it in a book, lead someone around by it, keep it to the grindstone or have it put thoroughly out of joint. What does that have to do with success? From an evolutionary point of view, pretty much everything: because it’s the nose that decides first whether a new acquaintance is someone we “can stand the smell of” or not. Long before a word has been exchanged. This is down to pheromones, olfactory (“smell-related”) messengers that carry information to our brain. Incidentally, this human scent note actually drives Grenouille, the protagonist of Patrick Süskind’s bestseller “Perfume”, to madness. In his search for the ultimate perfume, he’s even prepared to kill.
Scent Memory.
The human sense of smell is fully developed at birth. So you’ve barely seen the light of day and you’ve already had a noseful? Indeed you have, because at first you recognise your own parents not with your eyes, but with your nose, by their smell. Which other scents you come to find pleasant over the course of your life is decided by experience. That’s because smells are inseparably linked to our memory, specifically in the limbic system, where emotion and memory meet at the centre of the brain. So a scent note in the nose also means pictures in the head. Grandma’s apple strudel, freshly mown grass, wet rock after summer rain. Nothing brings back an experience faster than the right scent.
Pecunia non olet.
Money doesn’t stink, says a Latin proverb. Anyone who has actually sniffed it will find it smells of metal or paper at most, depending on how much you happen to have on you. In antiquity, of course, the saying referred figuratively to economic success. And throughout history, success was generally something you could smell very well: “par fumum” is also Latin and means “through smoke”. Before modern perfuming techniques were developed, the rooms of wealthy people were “scented” with precious woods and resins. In church, you can still clearly smell this incense today.
Fine fragrances had a religious side in ancient Egypt as well. In the elaborate burial rite, fragrant oils and essences were used for mummification. And to honour the ancient Egyptian gods, the magnificent statues of them in the temples were often rubbed with sacred ointments. Through the fine scent of myrrh, blue lotus, marjoram or iris, people felt connected to the gods and eased their dead on the way to a fragrant eternity.
Follow Your Nose.
This little trip into the past shows clearly: the most beautiful places were always those that smelled the best. So why should today be any different? Successful companies discovered the power of the nose long ago, using it to represent brand, product and name olfactorily too (in the nose, that is). Known in the trade as “Corporate Scent”, this interweaving of impression and smell happens entirely subconsciously, because you can’t control your sense of smell. Unless you hold your nose. So a delicate scent note only has to be noticeable enough to sit at the threshold of perception, if that, to lead us expertly by the nose.
But you certainly don’t have to kill for the perfect brand scent, as Grenouille did. Airdesign by Aromea is the magic word that translates aromas into mental images and vice versa. Technically, these days that works entirely without smoke: with innovative fragrance solutions, Aromea places your individual brand scent invisibly in the air. In the hotel lobby, the waiting room, the practice or on the sales floor. There, with a single breath, countless emotions suddenly awaken, because, as we know, the nose awakens memory. A fragrance composition with a subtle presence and complex profile, carried by the unmistakable perfume of success. The perfect olfactory calling card for brand, name, product and customer. Inspiring, multi-layered and unforgettable. That’s Aromea for you.
A piece of folk wisdom
