The spaces we visit every day are designed with a particular focus on visual elements such as lighting and interior design. The role of marketing specialists is to express a brand’s identity anywhere it comes into contact with its customers. And the most innovative among them dare to go further by defining the customer experience with aural elements and, in some sectors such as food and beverage, with strategies aimed at stimulating the taste buds.
However, something even more impactful can capture the brand’s essence and translate it into olfactory architectures that take hold of the subconscious mind and accompany it through unforgettable multi-sensory experiences. Scent is used within luxury settings to stir up emotions, memories and perceptions, helping to create an authentic and unmistakable experience.
It is a fact that olfactory marketing, and more specifically olfactory branding, creates deep emotions and connections between a brand and its audience.
Olfactory design and new forms of interaction
The sense of smell has unique powers, as it has a direct, immediate impact on the brain’s emotional centres. A fragrance can be engaging, energising, therapeutic, stimulating, calming or soothing. It can attract people, it can convince them to stay in a particular place and persuade them to return; it can transform the relationship between a brand and its customers forever.
A growing number of prestigious brands are choosing to use multi sensory design in their spaces, featuring olfactory architectures that are impossible to describe in words, but are created to be all-round immersive experiences. One of the most representative examples of olfactory branding is in the hotel industry.
Nowadays, a hotel provides more than just a place to stay: it gives guests a poly-sensory brand experience. How? By using exclusive fragrances that are pumped through the reception area, in the spa, fitness room or lounge.
The very concept of luxury implies delivering premium experiences: some prime examples are the historic Rome Cavalieri Hotel, the ultra-modern Pan Pacific London, top hotels in sophisticated resorts such as Zermatt, the Mandarin Oriental, or the Grand Hotel Tremezzo on Lake Como. While they’re flung all over the world, these hotels share something in common: the olfactory research and efficiency of Scent Company. Thanks to the expertise of our fragrance specialists, and the most advanced diffusion technologies, we’ve managed to render their guest experience even more sophisticated and immersive than before.
Design your spaces, create your olfactory signature
Any space that’s designed to be an immersive brand experience will feature a mixture of visual, tactile, sound and taste sensations, enhanced with a unique, bespoke olfactory signature.
There’s an exciting process involved in the concept of an olfactory logo, right through to it being diffused in a space. That’s especially the case when the desire is to create unique, exclusive olfactory signatures that are aligned with the brand identity in terms of values, messages, experiences and communication concept.
Olfactory branding is used in a variety of sectors across the board. What they share is the wish to take customers on a multi-sensory journey. That’s the case with department stores and malls such as the Les Galeries Lafayette Katara Plaza in Doha: Scent Company has developed a range of custom fragrances that have been paired with the various retail areas in the mall, and carefully designed to guide visitors along an invisible trail of engaging emotions.
Events are another excellent example of how olfactory branding can be an added value for the end customer experience. In mere fractions of a second, fragrances trigger perceptions and memories and lead to immediate associations that shape the original personality of every event. When all the senses come together, that’s when the real magic happens – something we saw in action at MAP, the Music Art Perfumes event at Palazzo Crespi in the centre of Milan.
There, a delicate symphony of scent notes highlighted the multi-sensory appeal of an event that featured intense stimuli, inspired by the artistic beauty of the venue, and the sublime, masterfully-performed music. For the occasion, Scent Company created fragrances that evoked red berries, vanilla and vetiver, and diffused them through the spaces of the event.
Do you want to leverage new branding strategies and find out your brand’s true smell? Tap Scent Company’s expertise and bring your spaces to life with new, unique olfactory landscapes!
