Branding the atmosphere

Scentmarketing and its future in the economics of senses

Andrey Schemelinov, Aromamedia, Moscow, PR and development manager

Informativity, economy of expression, speed of perception – scents’ features are very useful for marketing specialists. The sense of smell, this incredibly sensitive channel of information perception, can strengthen brand positioning in consumers’ minds. The main thing is to give a fair translation to the rational and emotional brand messages into the non-intelligible language.

From the dawn of time the mankind knew that fragrances are connected with emotions and can evoke diverse associations in the human brain, and now the science has come to substantiate that with theory. The fragrance impacts the consciousness quicker than other irritants and stays in the memory for a long time, often for life.
For example, remember and describe pictures-episodes from your childhood. Now listen to the scents that accompanied those. Which piece of information is more emotional?

The researchers have calculated that a single scent as the carrier of information is equivalent to a thousand words. This is more than just a conditionality. Try to describe the following composition: “The influence of the scent is akin to that of the exotic environment of the Indian ocean islands. This compositions is a colourful carnival with numerous participants: hyssop, sandal wood, black pepper, ylang-ylang, anise, peppermint, grapefruit and other representatives of nature. When you are engulfed by this fragrant exotic ambiance, all
the bad in life no longer has any power over you, reviving and inspiring you…” The fragrance can deliver this idea in the blink of an eye. Moreover, it leads your fantasy further, telling the story further, which is ever more important when the story gets personalized.

Why should we smell

Sensing a fragrance, turning to your memory and recreating everything that is tied to it – that would be a short description of how a fragrance works. Every day a human being perceives thousands of scents and the memory stores around 5 thousand scents. If something radically new is perceived the brain fixes a certain association with the scent. A memorable scent can tie the consumer to the brand.

A brand fragrance can be very diverse: evoking direct associations, for example the coffee smell in the coffee shop or the wood in a furniture store, or indirect, like an invigorating scent in the sports goods store or the distracting smell of sweets in the children’s clinic.

The fragrance can be fixed in the brand-book and used in all communications: office, exhibitions, promo-activities, sales premises. Scentmarketing can be aimed at external and internal audience, such as the end consumer or the B2B-partner. If the visitor entering the office is welcomed by a friendly and delicate scent, and a more tonifying one with citrus and spicy notes in the negotiation room, the effectiveness of the negotiation process will be a lot higher. Scents can increase loyalty and work potential of the people, impact their development and in the offices with an extended working day – preservation of attention concentration.

A fragrance will enhance the perception of product and services characteristics, for example, in the point of sales the products will appear more bright or, contrarily, more delicate. Fragrances impact the perception of colours and lighting level, sound, navigation comfort, originality and price availability – all in all over 50 such parameters.

Buy the bouquet

Aromalogo holds a very special place in the system of trademark scents. Indeed, it is the business card of a brand or a company in the world of fragrances. Its creation starts with determining the tasks that the aromalogo will have to fulfil. Ideally, by all means, the brand itself, the sphere of the company’s business and the fragrance are closely tied and each of the elements is rather strong. Such a pleasant combination, however can be achieved either when launching a new brand or in the course of deep rebranding. In most cases companies who resort to scentmarketing have a well-formed brand.

It is quite simple to compliment the original identity with an aromalogo if you resort to already made compositions. It is possible to buy the rights of usage for a specific scent and attach it to the selected brand. One of the crucial elements of the fragrance will be its congruence, the correlation with the brand essence and the visual aesthetics within a specific feature.

As an example, one can think of a medical company who was looking for a scent for the premises. The scent should accentuate the colour identification of the brand, and its main colour was purple. Furthermore, the atmosphere of the premises should alleviate tension, leave pleasant memories of this medical facility. The decision came in the shape of the “Bunch of Currant” scent composition. It is ongruent with the brand colour, brings a comforting feeling to a large space, softens the “cold” design and makes it warmer with its sweet notes.

Compile the bouquet

It is not impossible to create a unique trademark fragrance of a particular brand, that will be its own signature detail. The creative process starts with filling a brief and a technical specification for the perfumer. Those instruments detail the filling of the brand as well as the tasks set in front of the fragrance.

The whole process from A to Z may take anything from a month to a year, depending on the complexity of the task. The number of options offered to the client depend on the clarity of the task: if the fragrance is rather simple, one or two samples will suffice. The perfumer will compile the scent composition drop by drop in accordance with the customer’s brief. Once confirmed at the colloquium, the operating sample is handed over to the IT specialists who will then come up with a programme for the robots who assemble test batches. Those will then be certified by the controlling bodies of the manufacturing laboratory and only then passed on to the production.

A rough estimate of a new fragrance for space fragrancing would come to 5 000 Euros, if it is a simple model with 2-4 components. The complexity of the composition will be affected by the compatibility and availability of the components. If the work requires the services of the best perfumers in the world and the top ingredients, the development may well cost as much as 50 000 Euros, although this is more applicable to body fragrances.