The Smell of Success - Austin American Marketing Association

Recently, I dropped into the local Blockbuster on a Saturday night. The store was filled with indecisive shoppers mulling their entertainment choices. But what caught my attention was the smell greeting me when I opened the door. Popcorn. A few steps in, and there was a sales bin, waist level, filled with small bags of popcorn. I grabbed one and looked for the movie that a friend recommended. Blockbuster didn’t carry it. But I walked out with two rentals – a rare buy for me, the frugal shopper.

Hmmm. When marketing taps into the sense of smell, impulses to buy are stirred. Your olfactory gland takes in a familiar smell and an emotional response leads you to purchase the item.

Several retailers use synthetic scents to lure shoppers, make them linger, then lead them to buy their products. Cinnabon, those vendors of tasty cinnamon buns, use synthetic cinnamon as well as the real thing to engage your sense of smell.

After conducting market research, the Body Shop settled on the same scent experience in the same season for all of its mall stores.

When Verizon introduced its Chocolate cell phone in the summer of 2006; it pumped the smell of chocolate into its northeastern stores.

One of the most publicized marketing-meets-odor campaigns was for Exxon On The Run. They added a coffee scent to their brewing stations. Sales increased 55 percent for coffee.

I admit to applying scent-see-tive marketing techniques to attract interest for myself. Namely, I’ve heated water with vanilla extract on the stove before home buyers perused my listed house. It works. I’ve sold three houses in less than two weeks.

Researchers at Duke University put mice to sleep, wafted smells in their nostrils, woke them up, and observed that the mice remembered the smells and changed their behaviors.

What’s in the future? A Japanese company, SEEMS, is looking at digitizing scents in your environment so you can pick up the scent and send it through your cell phone. Imagine. It’s springtime. You’re in Washington, D.C. and the cherry blossoms are in bloom – you can send that sweet floral scent back home to your snow-bound parents in Michigan. However, SEEMS’ focus is to use digitized scents to alert responders to fire emergencies and for other medical uses. SEEMS refers to Scents Energy for Environment, Medical and Security.

While we appeal to the eyes with content, let’s remember that smell is called the oldest scent, and think of creative ways to incorporate appropriate uses of it in marketing.

Writing this blog is making me crave popcorn. Or chocolate. (A scent marketing company in California, ScentAndrea, put chocolate scent strips on 33 vending machines and sold a lot of Hershey’s bars.) May your life be blessed with sales revenue.