Hertz So Good!

Are you fed up with rental cars that bear odiferous evidence of the dozen beer-regurgitating cigarette-smoking small-bladdered Spring breakers who apparently used said-rental car to shuttle their wet dog to and from the beach?

Okay, maybe that only happened to me, but you get my point. An olfactory assault from your rental ride is no way to start a vacation. Fortunately, Hertz Cars is taking a more proactive approach to the stinky car problem than just hanging a paper pine tree from the rear view mirror.

Hertz has announced plans to begin installing the latest technology offered by OMI Industries in its vehicles. Fresh Wave IAQ is an all-natural non-toxic technology which neutralizes odors without relying on harmful chemicals, sure to revive that new car scent in the Hertz fleet.

Through the agreement with OMI, Hertz is currently using Fresh Wave IAQ in its cars at rental locations at 72 major U.S. and Canadian airports and is introducing Fresh Wave IAQ at 1,000 off-airport locations and 170 licensee locations across the U.S., as well as at Hertz locations at London`s Heathrow and Stansted airports.

“Addressing odor problems is a common challenge for any rental car provider - it can keep cars off the road and result in dissatisfied customers,” says Kent Seavey, Hertz Division Vice President, Operations Support, North America. “We wanted to take a progressive approach toward odor neutralization by finding an innovative partner that provides a `green` technology to help us meet these demands, and Fresh Wave IAQ was clearly the best choice. Working collaboratively with OMI, we pioneered a solution that is having an immediate and significant impact on achieving our objectives.”

Watching the Scent Marketing Trend

New York based Nooka - known for its innovative linear watch designs - has entered the endorphin branding™ age with the release of a new signature scent aptly called Nooka.

Designed by German fragrance developer Drom and Pierre-Constantin Gueros (who is credited for translating an abstract vision for the scent into particular ingredients), the new fragrance combines notes of leather and minerals intended to evoke imagery of watchbands and the quartz mechanism with top notes meant to smell like “electricity.”

“I don’t know if it sounds like bullshit,” says Matthew Waldman, who founded Nooka in 2004, “but the fragrance is designed.” The point, notes the innovative branding and interactive designer, is to create the scent of a “glam future” not unlike that envisioned in the 1960s and 70s and entirely appropriate to the funky-futuristic look of the Nooka watch lines. “I aspire to a chrome-coated future.”

It’s not your father’s cologne. It’s HER father’s cologne.

The Whiff-Guys have contended for some time now that one of the best cologne considerations for men looking to hook a woman is to find out what scent her father wore (women are subconsciously drawn to men who smell like dear old dad). But what if the father of your object of affection just wasn’t a cologne-kind-of-guy?

Not a problem, thanks to Garage by Comme des Garcons. This strange and comfortingly familiar fragrance — one in the Series 6 line of “anti-perfumes” — is designed to evoke memories of papa’s old workbench and is “like curling up in that old leather recliner with your dad after he’d worked on the car.” With notes of laurel aldehyde, leather, floral, Chinese cedarwood, vetiver acetate, and kerosene (yes, that’s acetate and kerosene), Garage is “all the good things about childhood and all the comfort scents you rarely indulge in as an adult.”

No word yet on companion scents for men looking to snag a woman whose father worked on, say, a shrimp boat or in a sewer system.

Olfactory Fact 226: Stinky Feet are Aromatherapeutic

The age-old “shoe smell” treatment for epileptic seizure, still in practice in some developing countries, may have some basis in scientific fact; in temporal seizures with secondary generalization, strong olfactory stimuli can halt the progress of a seizure.

Olfactory Fact #21: Your Taste is in Your Nose

When The Food Network’s popular Food Detectives blindfolded and nose-clipped a four-man panel of tasters, the subjects were unable to distinguish between the flavors of peach and mango, coconut and cherry jelly beans, or apple and raw potato.

She’s re-thinking that Signature Scent…

Fire officials first suspected that carbon monoxide or some other toxic fumes were responsible for sickening almost 150 people at a Texas bank call center on the afternoon of July 29th. But the culprit turned out to be…
…a co-worker’s perfume.

MedStar ambulance spokeswoman Lara Kohl said 34 people were taken to hospitals - 12 by ambulance - after reporting dizziness and shortness of breath Wednesday at a Bank of America call center in Fort Worth. An additional 110 were treated at the scene.

Fort Worth Fire Lt. Kent Worley said that the incident started with two people complaining about dizziness after a co-worker spritzed on perfume. Others reported being sick when an announcement was made that anyone with similar symptoms should exit the building.

Now, nearly one week later, investigators have still not released information on the specific scent which caused the incident - which no doubt has a few perfumers on edge, as mimicry of carbon monoxide poisoning is not considered much of a selling point in the world of fragrance.

Scent System DOUBLES Trade Show Traffic

The Ojai Cook, a citrus condiment company widely known for its “Lemonaise” line, experienced record crowds in their booth at the recent Fancy Food Show in San Francisco by using new scent technology. “The number of people to come by my booth more than doubled,” says Joan Vogel, owner of The Ojai Cook. The scent of oranges wafted from the ScentAir scent system and drew record crowds. Everyone was constantly commenting on how great my booth smelled.” Vogel added that, in the five years she has attended these trade shows, nothing has drawn more people interested in her products than the smell of citrus. “This is the best marketing tool I have ever seen. Now we are planning on using this scent technology in grocery stores at point of purchase.”