A Nose Fit for a Bionic Man

The mainstream use of Artificial Noses–which could conceivably replace drug, bomb, and even diabetes and cancer-sniffing dogs–may finally be on the horizon, thanks to biological engineers at MIT, who have discovered a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory. Moreover, the discovery may help researchers to understand how the sense of smell is able to recognize a seemingly infinite range of odors.
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The Wafting Smell of Politics

With all of the recent research into how everyday scents impact and affect the human brain, advertisers and marketers have begun using scents to increase brand loyalty, gain notice, and–most of all–increase the bottom line.

Studies have found that certain scents can trigger all sorts of emotions, increase moods, help with memory and comprehension, enhance a person’s perception, and even get them excited.
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Olfactory Fact #20: This Candidate May Have Won by a Nose

In a semi-covert operation called The Perfume of the President, South Korean candidate Lee Myung-bak supplemented his campaign efforts by dousing the air at voting booths with the same signature scent he had been spritzing at his campaign rallies, Great Korea. Now-President Lee Myung-bak won the election with 48.7% of the vote–nearly as many as all other ten candidates, combined!

The Scent of Leadership

The Whiff-Guys aren’t the only ones thinking outside the ballot box during this historic election year. West Virginia publicist and entrepreneur April Cline’s Presidential Perfumes are inspired by–although not formally endorsed by–the personalities and platforms of the candidates. The Barack Obama fragrance has “an appealing freshness and youthful energy, it is complimented by a strong dose of determination,” while the essence of John McCain is “aged with experience, accentuated with non-partisanship and military strength.”

Six other available scents include Hillary (”a delicate floral with notes of jasmine, violet, rose and musk) and VP contendees Palin and Biden (a free 1-oz bottle of corresponding veep fragrance is offered with each presidential purchase).

Olfactory Fact #150: It’s Not the Smell of Money that Fills Casinos

When the slot machine area of a Las Vegas casino was infused heavily with a pleasant scent, revenues shot up by 53%

Scent Marketing with DVDs

Advertisers looking to combine the efficiency of the CD and DVD with the effectiveness of scent marketing, look no further. CD Digital Card’s new Rub & Smell Discs are coated with a transparent varnish which releases any scent “from fresh fruit and flowers to coffee and pizza,” allowing marketers to give consumers a tantalizing sniff of the product being pitched on the disk.

Through a vastly superior version of the Scratch ‘n’ Sniff technology of the 1970s known as micro-encapsulation, the disk surface remains dormant until rubbed, then releases a scent which dissipates in seconds and waits to be rubbed again (readers of Whiff! who have rubbed the book’s cover and taken a sniff have experienced micro-encapsulation–the Whiff-Guys practice what they preach!).

A lengthy list of Stock Scents and suggested uses covers the bases from apple for Mac retailers and leather for car dealerships to gingerbread for bakeries and peaches for fruit stands, but retailers who don’t find the perfect signature scent for their product’s marketing CD/DVD are invited to either supply their own or request a custom blend.

Endorphin Branding™: The Scent of a Winner

No one who hasn’t spent several hours in an overcrowded stadium under the brutal mid-day Florida sun could appreciate the atmosphere at Barack Obama’s rally yesterday. By noon, those of us who crammed into Dunedin’s Knology Park were scampering to create a patch of shade with everything from our Obama T-shirts to our Obama buttons. By the time the Senator took the stage around 2:00, while we were by no means an ugly crowd, we sure were a sunburned, soggy, malodorous one. Of all the thoughts that might have entered my mind as this historic candidate appeared in the flesh right before my eyes, the first one I was conscious of was, “Russell is right!”

The “Russell” to whom I refer is Whiff-Guy C. Russell Brumfield, and the theory he had set forth which was compelling enough to override my thoughts at such a monumental moment was this: “Endorphin branding™ is the use of scent as a means of imprinting a highly emotional, positive experience in tandem with a targeted signature scent, which can be reintroduced at a later time to trigger and recreate the desired response. This strategy should be implemented at political events, which are positively charged environments ripe for this type of scent branding.”

In short, if a fresh, invigorating “Change We Need” signature-scent had been wafted through that sweltering stadium a few moments before Barack Obama’s appearance shifted our focus from our physical discomfort to the wild euphoria of meeting our (knock on wood) next president in the flesh, the collective sigh of appreciation would have been clearly audible–and not one of us present would have ever forgotten that scent or the emotional impact of the historic moment in which we first encountered it.

While the idea that endorphin branding™ could provide the winning edge in this tight presidential race which has already seen such innovative campaign efforts is nothing new to Russell, it was only Tuesday–the day before Obama’s Florida rally–that his concept exploded in the media, from Reuters, MSNBC, Morningstar, Netscape Celebrity, Good Morning Silicon Valley, the Hollywood Reporter, the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch, The Atlantic, and The Scent Blog to Yahoo Finance in the US, Canada, and the UK & Ireland, and beyond.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones compares the concept to the subliminal advertising used to peddle “Mokie-Coke” in Frederick Pohl’s hilarious The Merchants’ War, noting that Pohl’s science fiction “doesn’t seem quite so much like science fiction after reading about endorphin branding™, does it?” Over at ClusterFlock, the idea has readers speculating on the scent of our current administration (”A Baptist church that has just been exited by a bunch of white people” seems to be the consensus).

“With so many voters still ‘undecided,’ it may be time for McCain and Obama to bring out the big guns: perfume,” says Metro Boston’s Ned Ehrbar, his tongue firmly lodged against his cheek when he claims to find the subliminal voter manipulation of endorphin branding™ “…not creepy at all.”

Newsweek’s Andrew Romano finds the concept to be the “Weirdest. Strategy. Ever.” and highlighted the suggestion of “Brit” as to which scents might be employed by the candidates: “McCain: Redwood, burnt Hickory, toothpaste, and wet cardboard covered with English Leather Timberline for Men. Obama: Basketball leather, a hint of Acqua Di Gio by Giorgio Armani, and a new car with Little Trees Vanillaroma air freshener.”

That much of the mainstream media draws a chuckle from the concept of endorphin branding™ is not surprising. Neither are the ensuing comments on their sites which, for the most part, seem to hover somewhere between amusement and contempt. To anyone outside the world of scent marketing, sure, the whole idea seems at once frightening (remember the uproar over the usage of visual and audio subliminal messaging in the 1970s?) and humorous (not only is the explosion of recent research charting the effectiveness of scent marketing largely unknown to the public, anything that has to do with Noses or Smells is funny–I don’t know why, it just is). I can only assume that none of these journalists or commenters are familiar with last December’s South Korean presidential race. In a semi-covert operation called The Perfume of the President, staffers applied the already-well-documented success of commercial scent branding to the campaign of Lee Myung-bak. From the start of his campaign, Great Korea, a scent designed to evoke feelings of “hope, victory, and passion,” was sprayed into the crowds at the candidate’s public rallies. On December 19, volunteers staffed the voting booths to make sure the same scent filled the air as voters cast their ballots. As this former mayor of Seoul was a frontrunner from the get-go, we may never know precisely how great an influence “the Perfume of the President” exerted over the results, but we do know that now-President Lee Myung-bak left his competition in the dust, receiving 48.7% of the vote–nearly as many as all ten other candidates, combined.

And, in sifting through this week’s media avalanche on the subject–after my own epiphany at the Obama rally yesterday–I’m finding that some insiders have begun weighing in. This reply to the Newsweek piece by “pkjames” sums it up nicely:

“In regards to the “Scented Campaign” post, I thought I would share some personal experience there. In a campaign for City Council in Des Moines, Iowa that I managed, the candidate and I sprayed the candidates’ cologne on each mail piece – some 30,000 pieces of mail. The response was outstanding, bringing in calls of volunteers, campaign contributions and calls for yard signs – much more than a piece of literature with a similar message sent just days earlier.
Beyond message and timing, additional stimuli such as scent must be considered when contributing to a candidates’ image using scarce resources. Is endorphin branding bizarre? Of course it is, unless you’re dealing with securing political power, then wouldn’t it be just as bizarre not to use every means necessary to secure the most powerful elected position in the world?”

MSNBC takes a WHIFF!

“Recent brain research shows that scent speaks to people in a powerful language that triggers emotions and memories that influence perceptions and decision-making,” said Russell Brumfield, author of the new book “Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age.

MSNBC gets the whole story right HERE!

AsiaSpa Magazine Follows Its Nose!

“No one smells like you do. Your natural scent is as personal as your fingerprints and we’ve been subconsciously using its invisible power to attract each other for generations. ‘A newborn baby smiles when it recognises the smell of its mother for the first time and scientists even believe that fetuses can smell in the womb,’ says Russell Brumfield, a scent expert who dives deep into the power of our olfactory system in his book Whiff!. ‘Throughout our lives scent memories are being made for recall in later life and emotional imprints are created with each and every new experience,’ he says. ‘Good times and bad, happy and sad are stored away complete with an emotionally scented connection.’”

Louise Renwick of AsiaSpa Magazine gets the whole scoop in the September 2008 issue right HERE!

MorningStar takes a WHIFF!

“Scent marketing is a major trend being embraced by the corporate world, and the candidates would be well-served to implement a scented campaign strategy, particularly given the emotional nature of politics, which lends itself to the influences of scent.” The whole story is right HERE!

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