Synthetic smells, synthetic sells

I’m afraid this link is going to expire, and probably requires registration, but: If you’re interested in scent marketing — meaning the way fragrance is used in hotels, retail environments, and so on — here’s a good overview by James Vlahos from the NYT Mag‘s Key, by James Vlahos. The piece is interesting, but it’s also long, so here’s the nut graf:

Take a whiff. Maybe you’ve noticed — and maybe you haven’t, and this isn’t entirely by accident — that the world has lately become a more fragrant place. Westin hotels waft a blend of green tea, geranium and black cedar into lobbies; Sheraton has jasmine, clove and fig. Jimmy Choo stores smell of cardamom and ivy, while Thomas Pink opts for the tang of fresh linen. Artificially introduced aromas are seemingly everywhere, and while certain applications are obvious — like pumping the smell of fresh-from-the-oven bread into a supermarket to draw shoppers to the bakery department — a growing number of companies employ the technique to sell products with no intrinsic odors. Sony Style stores, for example, are scented with a blend that includes orange, vanilla and cedar, an aroma the company hopes will put female shoppers at ease. Even “new car smell” isn’t what it used to be. Cadillac, for instance, wanting to ensure that its models smell not just like any generic new car, infuses interiors with a custom scent called Nuance.

And here’s my favorite tidbit:

The hurdles that scent marketing would have to overcome to achieve anything like that effect, however, are significant. Scent doesn’t work like a broadly efficacious drug, but rather by playing on learned associations particular to individuals. One man’s cinnamon is another’s skunk. Preferences are cultural (vanilla tops the charts for Americans, while sandalwood is a hit in India) and generational (people born before 1930 love natural smells like grass and horses, while people born later are fond of synthetic smells like Play-Doh and SweeTarts).

I find it somewhat depressing that a huge chunk of the population might be “fond of synthetic smells.” But maybe that explains Crayon Cologne (more on which here) or, for that matter, Play-Doh Cologne.