What is Scent Marketing?

Olfactory marketing leverages scents to encourage customer purchases.

Olfactory marketing, or Scent marketing, is the practical application of exploiting the sense of smell to achieve sales of a particular product.

This branch of sensory marketing, therefore uses the immense possibilities of one of the five senses to engage the audience.

The wise use of this form of sensory marketing leads to influencing customer buying behavior, attempting to alter perceptions and elicit particular emotions and sensations through the scents and fragrances of the product itself.

The strength of olfactory marketing is due to the fact that scents are more easily remembered by the brain because they are processed directly by the limbic system.

Olfactory marketing leads to an increase in brand recognition up to recalling a positive memory of the same label.

Practical Examples of Scent Marketing

Which brands have been so-called best practice in the field of scent marketing?

We have already talked about P&G and BMW, but two other brands that have stood out for this practice are:

• Swatch: in 2000, the famous watch brand scented its stores, packaging, and the watches themselves with Bulgarian rose on Mother's Day, creating a strong connection with the model designed specifically for the occasion.
• Karada: another stroke of genius was by the well-known Florentine clothing brand. It seems that a particular collection had been sprayed with an essence based on pheromones which are famously linked to sexual attraction.

Scent marketing is therefore a powerful tool in the hands of marketers, but a blunder is just around the corner, so be careful!