What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [80]
I speak on the phone to Hans Laube’s widow, Novia, who now lives in Florida. Through her heavy Estonian accent I hear fierce determination and loyalty. She tells me how she met and married this tall, handsome, intellectual European; how particular he was about his clothes—the fine suits and custom-made shirts. How hard he worked, often late at night, and about the seven months he spent commuting to Chicago to prepare Smell-O-Vision for its debut. For the Laubes, a lot was riding on Smell-O-Vision. She tells me, “Michael Todd and everybody said the name Laube would be known all over the world. Because we anticipated that this would be a great success.”
When I ask about the competition with Walter Reade and AromaRama, her tone sharpens. “He came out just a few weeks before us, or just a month before us. He spoiled the entire idea because when people went to see his movie the smell clung to their clothes and they said, ‘Oh no, no, we don’t want that.’…[Reade] wanted to make money, he wanted to come out before us, and he stole my husband’s idea.” The failure of Smell-O-Vision was a financial blow to Laube. Novia says Michael Todd promised her husband a nickel for every ticket sold. The film ran for months, but “they did not give Hans one single penny. So that was a terrible disappointment too. They did not keep their promise.” It took a psychological toll as well. “It killed my husband mentally,” she says.
After the movie closed, Laube rented laboratory space on East Eighty-fourth Street, where he developed an electronic home fragrancer called the Bestair, but the device was ahead of its time and never made it to market. The organizers of the U.S. exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair approached him about a scented movie project, but dropped it at the last minute. With that final, crushing disappointment, Laube threw in the towel. “I had to take care of my husband for twelve long years…to support him after that because he ended up penniless, totally penniless.” After years of declining health, Hans Laube died in 1976, at the age of seventy-six.
IN THE CORNER of Carmen Laube’s living room, topped by a collection of ornate table lamps, sits a shiny stainless-steel cabinet. Behind its clear Plexiglas face I see motors, pumps, gauges, and dials, and above them a turntable ringed with glass bottles. I’m looking at the ultimate Smell-O-Vision artifact, the working prototype her father used to fine-tune scents for Mike Todd’s movie forty-seven years ago. A lever arm above one flask is frozen in place like the Tin Woodman’s arm, forever poised to descend and extract the next scent. The smell has long since evaporated.
CHAPTER 9
Zombies at the Mall
All around the world people and companies are becoming aware of the power of scent.
—MARTIN LINDSTROM, Brand Sense
NASAL PERSUASION IS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE. A scent generator hidden in a ventilation duct, or parked discreetly in the corner, can amplify the natural scent of a store’s merchandise: high-end shirtmaker Thomas Pink plays freshly laundered linen, while the Hershey’s outlet in Times Square vents extra chocolate into the air. Some merchants get creative, like the furniture store in Massachusetts that filled its children’s section with a bubble-gum scent. Even brands with no inherent scent get in on the act: consumer electronics giant Samsung wafts a corporate logoscent into its flagship store on Columbus Circle, and Westin Hotels uses a signature “White Tea” composition in the lobby. In each case, by providing a more engaging retail experience, the company hopes to benefit in terms of sales, consumer satisfaction, and brand image.
Are we on the brink of a new era in advertising? Marketing wunderkind Martin Lindstrom believes so. In his recent book Brand Sense, extolling the future of multisensory branding, Lindstrom is