Scent Marketing Blog

Bob Nixon from CBC interviews Dmitri Gailit from Air Aroma Canada and finds out how scent marketing is making an impact on retail sales. Take a look as they discuss the scent of Freshly Baked Bread, Apple Pie, Vanilla and even Green Tea.


View the video here

Consumers are savvy, busy, and let’s face it, just plain hard to pin down so you can advertise to them. This results in the increasing need and appeal of ambient advertising which gets to the consumers’ subconscious. Until recently, the only truly efficient guaranteed form of ambient advertising was through Instore Radio advertising. But thankfully, those crafty scientists have come up with something new. Scent Marketing.

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Scent marketing doesn’t have to be complex. Even the most subtle aroma can act as a scent marketing strategy, envoking emotions and triggering memories. One of my favourite restaurants always has a big bunch of lilies at the entrance. Without fail, every time I smell lilies, I think of this particular restaurant – and what I’m going to eat next time I’m there! The last time I went there, they had no lilies… so it would seem this isn’t part of a greater scent marketing strategy.

Smell is one of the most important senses, it’s proven to be linked to the memory and feelings part of the brain. Science has shown that humans are actually able to recall 35% of smells and associate them to particular memories or situations. Compare this to our capability of only being able to recall 5% of what we read. That’s why the olfactory marketing / scent marketing is gaining more ground within corporate marketing strategies.

The marketing of smell is relatively new, because until recently, ads with aromas used to be exclusive to the fragrance industry and cosmetics. Increasingly though many businesses in a wide range of sectors are investing their marketing budgets in to scent marketing, aiming to attract customers and also gain a competitive advantage in the market.

Big name U.S. brands such as Hard Rock Café, Ritz Carlton, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Marriott and Macy’s, among others, have achieved successful and most importantly measurable results with scent marketing.

Full story here.

Maureen Morrin, a marketing professor from Rutgers School of Business, to discuss the connection between scent and spending.

Presensia and Quividi announce that they have developed TargetScent, an innovative solution that makes it possible to dispense fragrances according to the gender of a potential customer.


TargetScent is composed of a Scentys4 dispenser controlled by Quividi’s VidiReports. Scentys4 is a compact fragrance dispenser recently released by Presensia, which can diffuse up to 4 different scents up to a 5-meter distance. Scentys uses a patented technology for fully dry diffusion (no liquids, anti-allergenic, no contact with the users’ skin, controlled concentration of perfuming materials). The Scentys4 dispenser can be completed with a screen that shows the video clip relative to the dispensed fragrance.


This scent marketing tool is a world’s first », says Clément Jeanjean, Presensia’s CEO. « It combines in a simple and efficient way the latest progresses in message targeting and the maturity of a scent marketing technology which has been adopted by many well-known perfume, cosmetics and wine and spirits brands.


With Presensia, we have developed a new application of the targeted marketing offered by our live audience measurement technology », », adds Olivier Duizabo, Quividi’s CEO. « We’re empowering a new generation of in-store marketing tools that embed measurement, adaptation and interactivity capabilities similar to what exists on the Internet.


Source: http://www.quividi.com/

Commit to your scent marketing program. Believe it or not, the main hindrance to successful scent marketing is poor tracking.


Evaluating the “before-during-after” scenario is crucial but often neglected. If you use, say, scent marketing to promote the sales of flowers in a supermarket then you have to capture (over a certain time period) and record the sales in the unscented environment. Then do the same during the scented period. For curiosity’s sake you may discontinue the use of scent altogether and see what happens. Were you able to successfully lay a scent track to the flower department? Did you generate loyalty and repeat purchases? How about playing with the price? Can you maintain an increase? There are plenty of scenarios you can play as long as your store and inventory management is plugged in.


You may want to push scent through your front door the same way some stores blow cold air on the sidewalk on a steamy day. A simple electronic people counter on the door can tell you if you were successful in doing so. Now the traffic is there, what do you do with it? Unless you have enough sales staff or product on hand you will not be able to increase your sales and capitalize on your scent marketing effort. You may even end up with a frustrated consumer.


Unless you keep close tabs on the results you will never find out if scent marketing makes sense for you. It would not be fair to give it a bad name only because efficiency has not been measured. The biggest issue with installed systems is not reliability of the delivery system itself but that the consumables are not replaced as required. Once you have made a commitment you need to stay with it and instruct your staff accordingly so they do not see it as a nuisance but an important component of your marketing.


Courtesy of Branding Strategy Insider.

I have so many questions about scent marketing. Why don’t we see more examples of scent marketing? Or is it that we are simply oblivious to the scent marketing happening in our every day lives? And why does the market seem to be so strongly opposed to this strategy? Is it really some sinister, underground marketing conspiracy that we need to be protected from? Are we simply control freaks – trying to control the way we are marketed to?

No junk mail signs, anti-spam protectors, no telemarketing calls… just how much of the marketing environment can we control? And since when do we get a say about how we are marketed to?