What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [81]
In 1925, for example, a headline in New York’s Daily News Record read “Sense of Smell—An Important Factor in All Modern Merchandising.” In 1934 Forbes told its readers, “‘Sell by Smell’ may be the next big slogan in marketing.” In 1939 The Management Review said, “The odor engineer is joining the color engineer as a consultant to the sales manager.” In 1947 The Saturday Evening Post warned that “Shrewd merchandisers have charted a new route to your pocketbook. Now, shoe polish smells like roses, ink is perfumed, imitation leather has the scent of pigskin.”
Today’s merchandisers continue to experiment, with such offerings as lavender-scented automobile tires (aimed at women) and high-end bowling balls redolent of orange-ginger. The real action, however, lies in projecting olfactory character into indoor commercial spaces. This application has been fully embraced in one large business sector: the gaming industry. Las Vegas is the trend’s epicenter; half the major properties on the Strip have scent systems. The MGM Grand has deployed as many as nine scents simultaneously around its property, and the Venetian features a corporate logoscent called “Seduction.” In their quest to fine-tune consumer experience, casinos have made sensory engineering a priority. Guest rooms are kept chilly to discourage visitors from spending too much time in them. Complex floor plans channel patrons farther into the gaming areas, where clocks are banished, along with views of the outside world. In seeking new ways to keep people playing longer, casinos have taken the lead in manipulating the commercial smellscape.
A negative example—the removal of a brand’s characteristic smell—reveals the importance of the olfactory dimension. As the Starbucks Coffee chain expanded, it decided to switch from open containers and store-ground coffee to flavor-locked packaging. Its goal was to ensure the freshness of its roasted beans and to make life easier for the java-jockeys. But the vacuum-sealed packaging came with an unanticipated cost: it made the shops aromatically sterile. Without a coffee-heavy atmosphere to entice them, customers were being poached by the competition. Starbucks lost what company founder Howard Schultz calls “perhaps the most powerful nonverbal signal we had.” To get it back, the chain is considering a return to scooping and grinding actual beans.
Businesses can be confronted with olfactory issues by a sudden change in public policy. When smoking in pubs and clubs was recently banned in Scotland and Wales, owners were shocked to discover how bad their establishments smelled. Once the smoke cleared, Luminar, a company that owns a chain of British nightclubs, found that “the stench of beer and sweat was no longer masked by smoke.” The company began a frantic search for ways to mask the unpleasant new reality. The proposed remedy—blowing rose scent over a mass of sweaty, burping bodies—doesn’t sound promising, but here’s hoping they find an effective solution. Fraternity houses across America will be paying attention.
A DECADE AGO, the social psychologist Robert Baron cased a shopping mall near Albany, New York, mapping out odorless areas as well as spots that had a naturally pleasant scent—the latter turned out to be near Mrs. Field’s Cookies, the Cinnabon store, and The Coffee Beanery. Next, Baron sent in accomplices who approached shoppers and “accidentally” dropped a pen or asked for change for a dollar. Baron recorded one simple response: Did the shopper help the stranger or not? Helping behavior—picking up the pen or making change—was significantly higher in pleasantly scented areas than in unscented ones. Baron’s experiment was the first to examine the effects of odor outside the lab and in a natural consumer ecosystem—the mall. Its result was clear: shoppers respond to ambient scent in measurable