Smells Like Brand Spirit

Until recently, though, smell has been the stepchild of the senses. "Smell is fairly dormant in our culture," says Ron Pompei, CEO of the design firm Pompei AD. The reason, he says, is that as civilizations moved from the agricultural to the industrial age, we generated a lot of smells that weren't too savory. Between sewage in the streets and belching factories, "for a couple thousand years, we haven't had an environment worth smelling," Pompei says. "But when we reopen that sense, we open up possibilities."

Savvy brand stewards are pouncing on that opening. The scent of Starbucks coffee, for example, is instantly identifiable, even in the midst of a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Fliers on Singapore Airlines relish the scented towels the airline distributes before meals. Borrowing a scented page from its hip young corporate sibling W Hotels, Westin Hotels recently began a test of White Tea, its new signature fragrance, in eight cities around the world. "We think scent is a pretty exciting element of the whole guest experience," says Sue Brush, senior vice president, Westin Hotels & Resorts. "It's one of those subliminal things you don't necessarily advertise, but we hope it can help guests decompress after the rigors of the road." In developing the scent, Westin rejected florals as too traditional and citrus as too harsh. The fragrance also had to have international appeal. The company's designer, DB Kim, chose White Tea for its simplicity and its ability to both relax and energize. Westin expects to roll out the fragrance to the entire chain by the fourth quarter, deploying scent in the hotels' public spaces via a diffusing machine.

Car manufacturers have long recognized the smell of a new car as one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal for cementing a love affair between their brand and a new owner. When Rolls-Royce buyers began complaining in the mid-1990s that the new cars didn't live up to their predecessors, researchers tracked the problem to its source: the smell. Using a 1965 Silver Cloud as a reference point, the company deconstructed the scent, identifying 800 separate elements. It then recalibrated the aroma and now sprays it under the seats to re-create the scent of a classic "Roller."

Indeed, so alluring is the scent of a new car that manufacturers have bottled it, enabling used-car dealers to spray their inventory with the fragrance to help move jalopies off the lot. But Lexus, which prides itself on the high ranking its vehicles' interiors invariably receive from consumers, disavows such olfactory ruses. "It's the natural components of the vehicle that make the Lexus smell," says Ann Bybee, corporate manager of advertising, brand, and product strategy. Those components include maple, birch, and cowhide leather. "Lexus has a stronger leather smell in our cars than BMW, maybe because they also have those nonleather, leatherette-type vehicles as well," she sniffs.

A few hundred miles from Paris, Napoleon famously sent an urgent missive to Josephine: "Home in three days. Don't wash."

One needn't have ridden a Paris subway recently to recognize that scent is a powerful force regardless of nationality. According to the Sense of Smell Institute, the average human being is able to recognize approximately 10,000 different odors. What's more, people can recall smells with 65% accuracy after a year, while the visual recall of photos sinks to about 50% after only three months.

Proust may have had his madeleines, but everyday Americans have equally powerful olfactory memories, says Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago. In one study of 989 people, he found that their favorite childhood smells varied based on when they were born and raised. Subjects born between 1900 and 1930 waxed nostalgic about natural smells -- grass, trees, horses, pie. Those born after 1930 were more likely to remember artificial scents from their youth -- Play-Doh, Crayola crayons, Keds, SweetTarts. "That suggests that the things people are nostalgic for are now more artificial and brand-related than in the past," says Hirsch. "If a company can associate a mood state with a smell, it can transfer that happy feeling to the product." Those who don't lock in that connection risk being left behind, he warns.

But experts say simply slapping a scent on a product won't assure a brand's acceptance any more than piping in "Feelings" on the sound system in a department store will make customers buy more socks. For one thing, the scent must match logically with the product and its customers. In other words, infusing pneumatic drills with the scent of lilac probably won't goose sales among construction workers.