What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [89]
I had a close encounter with anticapitalist scent-bashing a few years ago, when I was among a group of experts invited by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington to help the National Museum of Natural History plan a large traveling exhibit on the science and history of smell. Along with curators, exhibit designers, and high-ranking staff members, we spent the day in the museum’s dark-paneled boardroom that looks out on Constitution Avenue and the IRS building. It was a typical institutional brainstorming session, with lots of cringe-inducing “exercises” meant to sharpen our creativity. One of these involved free association with pictures clipped from magazines. We took turns arranging them in domino fashion on the floor and afterward tried to interpret the pattern. The group decided the pictures fell into two categories: “human” and “environment.” (I was puzzled; aren’t humans part of the environment?) Then a senior curator reached down and removed an Estée Lauder soap ad from the arrangement; she felt it didn’t belong to either category. I grew more puzzled.
For the next exercise, we broke into working groups. The soapsnatcher and I were assigned to the same group. Our task was to think of exhibit topics that would interest teenage visitors. With no prompting, she launched into a heated speech: the exhibit should make teens aware of how companies use smell to influence them. Others in the group gently challenged her, but she wouldn’t relent. Her mission was to alert teens to the sinister corporate conspiracy behind fragrance advertising. I pointed out that subliminal advertising was largely a crock, but still she wouldn’t let go. She was determined to stop America’s youth from being turned into scent-controlled mall zombies. Finally, I reminded her that the Smithsonian was planning to fund the show with donations from corporate sponsors, and that these folks might be reluctant to fork over three million dollars for the privilege of having their business smeared.
The Smithsonian never did get around to doing a smell exhibition.
FOR EVERY ANTAGONIST of scent marketing there are a dozen crazily optimistic Martin Lindstroms preaching the benefits of sensory branding and experimenting with new ways of appealing to consumers through the nose. It’s true that scent marketing has been promoted many times by futurologists of the past—it’s a field whose promise has yet to be fulfilled. But the same can be said of Internet advertising or other new frontiers. The strategies of scent marketing are still evolving, but its technology has matured rapidly. All sorts of scent-delivery devices are available today, ranging from industrial-scale diffusers that cover an entire Wal-Mart to point-of-sale displays that blow a scented kiss at individual customers. There are passively activated devices that spritz as you walk past, and interactive kiosks that immerse you in a multisensory audio-visual-olfactory experience. Marketers will soon learn the best ways to put this hardware to use.
There is another reason to believe the field has a bright future. We are now raising a generation of scent-centric young consumers. Unilever’s Axe body spray is a major hit: walk past any high school and smell for yourself. Aromatherapy has evolved from a quasiclinical folk practice to mainstream product positioning; no college dorm room is complete without an array of scented candles. Students use them for studying, for chilling, and for, well, you know. So scent-aware is this generation that Procter & Gamble’s Febreze odor eliminator is equally popular—and often seen in the same dorm rooms. These are the consumers who will put scent marketing on the map.
CHAPTER 10
Recovered Memories
To the boy Henry Adams,