It’s not only the 21st century that has brought us scent marketing in hotels and shops, gyms and travel agencies. Scent has always had the power to trigger particular associations. A good example is the Catholic Church: for a good 2,000 years it has been putting its visitors in a devout mood with dense clouds of incense.
It smells good.
So there’s no denying that scents do something to us. In purely physical terms, the phenomenon is fairly easy to explain: scents act on the limbic system and the hippocampus, the central switching station for our memories. The limbic system, in turn, is the part of the brain responsible for our emotions and our instinctive behaviour. A person’s intellectual performance is also attributed to this system. Ergo: in combination with the other parts of the brain, the limbic system is the be-all and end-all of Homo Sapiens. And a marketing tool for Homo Oeconomicus. Because in our heads, scents do quite extraordinary things to us: they seduce us into physical desire, affect our dreams, lift our mood and determine where we feel at ease and where we don’t. That last one is a clear competitive edge for rooms that are “scented” over rooms that aren’t. Or for products.
The scent of bliss.
Hotels want their properties to smell of “home”, of cosiness, cleanliness and class. From slightly tart white tea to lemony bergamot. Some travel agencies try to get their customers in the mood for their upcoming tropical trip with a soft smell of coconut. Car manufacturers think their vehicles should smell of leather or at least of something classy, and install diffusers in the glove compartment, so that at holiday time you sit in a traffic jam with the smell of cedar, sea breeze or freshly cut grass in your nose. But scents can do more than conjure up a cosy feeling: they also lift the mood and have a health benefit. Because when scent molecules reach the nose, they meet the olfactory receptors on the roof of the nasal cavity (Latin: tectum nasi). And from there, the scent information goes straight to the brain, into the limbic system just explained. This is where our emotions are controlled, closely coupled with memories. That’s why scents should be seen as particularly intense stores of memory. Much like a particular melody you heard as a child. Or that one song from the summer you turned 18. And that calms the nervous system and - when the associations are lovely - releases happiness hormones.
Individual scent.
In this way, the scent of a product - whether a hotel room or a fashion store - becomes a very individual “scent of home” and a trademark that you connect with exactly that room or that thing. And ideally store as an instantly recognisable memory. Everyone associates something different with a particular smell. Of course: nothing is more subjective than our memories. But geographical and cultural differences also draw a varied scent map: in Germany, for instance, cleanliness is associated with citrus scent, while in the USA, floral scent is the signal for spotlessly clean rooms. That’s why developing a Corporate Scent always involves several components that take the location and cultural environment into account.
Get started…
What we smell changes our perception. And with it, our mood. In principle, smells of “natural origin” are already a good start for scent marketing - as a counterweight, so to speak, to an unnatural and stressful everyday life. Cedarwood scent puts you in a good mood, jasmine and orange have a calming effect. And lavender goes without saying. Or perhaps it should be a blend? There’s hardly any limit to what scent marketing can do…
Science and experience are in agreement.
