The Endorphin Branding™ of Sin City

Among the first savvy institutions to recognize the effectiveness of scent marketing, individual Las Vegas casinos have been using fragrance to maximize profits for years (when the slot machine area of one Las Vegas casino was infused heavily with a pleasant scent, revenues shot up by 53%). But a pending collaboration between top Vegas executives, city officials, and the Vegas Airport Authority may mark the first-ever scent branding of an entire city.

The Scent of Las Vegas will be unveiled on November 20th during the upcoming ScentWorld Conference & Expo 2009on November 20th under the management of the Scent Marketing Institute. “It is the ideal medium to capture and transmit the soul of the city, defining it as a world-class brand,” says Institute founder Harald H. Vogt.

The creative task of developing the Signature Scent of Sin City will fall to “enfant terrible of contemporary perfumery” Christophe Laudamiel, the man behind such notable fragrance movers and shakers as Estée Lauder, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch.

“The Scent of Las Vegas will add another key dimension to the powerful Vegas brand,” says Steven Landau, concept co-creator, CMO and founder of ScentSational Technologies. “Imagine landing at the airport and knowing just by the scent, that you’ve arrived.”

Olfactory Fact #161: Litter Boxes and Shoe Boxes are Close Cousins

The almost-universally offensive stench of cat urine is caused by the same volatile sulfur compounds produced by the bacteria that colonize sweaty human feet.

Real Fashion Scents!

There was something new in the air at Fashion Week 2009. Thanks to the creative noses at ScentAir, the goth feather & leather stylings of Rodarte’s 2010 line hit the catwalk in a multisensory orchestration of sight, sound and scent.

Produced and directed by Alexandre de Betak of Bureau Betak, the show engaged its audience at the Gagosian Gallery before the lights came up with billows of smoky fog and a smoldering woodsy fragrance produced by ScentAir’s patented ScentWaves technology, which uses a dry-air technology that releases fragrance without sprays, aerosols or heated oils.

A complete video of the show - minus the olfactory element - is available on www.rodarte.net.

Endorphin Branding™ on a Budget

If you’re still on the fence about the benefits of scent branding your product, here’s a nifty budget-conscious way to test the waters. For about the price of the same promotional pens you’re already encouraging customers to “steal,” ScentedPens.com can set you up with Aromawriters, designed to tickle the olfactory center of your customer and make sure your brand lingers pleasantly in their mind. Retailers can choose from an inventory of stock fragrances or take advantage of the fragrance matching service to tailor a scent uniquely designed to capture the special essence of their product.

Using Good Scents

Cityfile New York correctly quotes Whiff-Guy C. Russell Brumfield’s statement that “…specific scents can increase sales from 20 to over 90 percent in some studies” and, for this particular story, we’d like to place a little added emphasis on Brumfield’s choice of the word specific.

The marketing display of a new Hollister store in the Big Apple includes some buff surfer-dude models outside its doors and the wafting scent of its signature fragrance - both good ideas and certainly in keeping with the innovative and often-sexy advertising strategies of its parent franchise Abercrombie & Fitch. There’s just one problem: The Hollister signature fragrance, according to neighboring businesses, well…stinks.

So unlovely is the fragrance, according to today’s New York Post, that one frustrated protester reportedly set off a stink bomb outside the 40,000-square-foot emporium…a tactic which may have backfired as “…it smells better than the Hollister scent.”

Of course, there’s always the chance that it’s sour grapes rather than sour smells which has the Hollister storefront’s neighboring competitors’ noses bent out of shape. A Hollister spokesman who identified himself only as Chris stands behind the effectiveness of the scent campaign and told the Post, “We don’t spray any fragrance outside the store, only inside.” He also denied any knowledge of stink bomb counter attacks.

Welding Fumes Linked to Anosmia

Eye protection has always been standard safety gear for professional welders but little consideration was given to the occupational hazard of that least-appreciated of the five senses…until now. A new study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has found that welders who work in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation may be at risk for loss of sense of smell.

“This is the first study to clearly demonstrate that welders who work in confined spaces without adequate respiratory protection are at risk for damaging their sense of smell,” says Richard Doty, Read more

Olfactory Fact #71: Just a Few Noses Have Never Smelled Roses

Congenital anosmia is listed as a “rare disease” by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), meaning that fewer than 200,000 people in the United States are born without a sense of smell.

Book ‘em, Dan-O. Olfactory Assault One.

A bill currently under consideration by the Honolulu City Council would make it illegal to bring onto city buses “odors that unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit system, whether such odors arise from one’s person, clothes, articles, accompanying animal or any other source.”

Under the bill, a person found in violation may be ordered to leave transit property and issued a summons or citation by a police officer. If convicted, a person could be fined up to $500, spend up to six months in jail, or be both fined and jailed. “As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different,” says Councilman Rod Tam, co-sponsor of the bill. “Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor.”

Council Transportation Chairman Gary Okino is less certain. “There’s the whole issue about at what point does it become illegal. How smelly does a person have to be? Just to base things on smell, I just don’t feel good about that.”

“We are obviously concerned about laws that are inherently vague, where a reasonable person cannot know what conduct is prohibited,” says Daniel Gluck, of ACLU Hawaii, who is concerned that the bill raises constitutionality issues. “Vague laws — like the proposed ‘odor’ ban — open the door to discriminatory enforcement based on an officer’s individual prejudices. We would like everybody to be polite on city mass transit and I think that’s a good idea. But we’re not a police state.”

The War of the Noses

Those two separate nostrils aren’t just there so your nose can keep up aesthetically with your eyes and ears. According to a study from Rice University, the dual olfactory orifices–like most things–thrive on competition. When exposed separately to different odors, the nostrils do not smell a blend but rather an alternating sample of each individual aroma.

This “nostril rivalry,” as dubbed by the study published in Current Biology, is similar to what happens when the eyes are presented with different images, or the ears with different tones.
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A Whiff of What’s in Your Wallet

Scented credit cards actually date back to 2006, when Tokyo-based JCB, the largest credit card issuer in Japan, launched the deliciously fruity-scented LINDA Sweet credit card as a marketing tool to help their card stand out in a crowded wallet. But now, thanks to David Bonalle and Glen Salow (who already hold over 150 issued and pending patents in various applications of credit card biometric security), American Express may become the first to utilize Scent Authentication to verify the identity of the card holder by synchronizing the encrypted “smellprint” on record with the actual person using the card

Unlike your signature on the back of your credit card (the one nobody ever checks anyway), your “biosignature” is completely unique and cannot be forged–good news for nervous consumers in an age of surging credit card fraud and identity theft. U.S. Patent #7497375 (which claims a priority date of July 1, 2004 but was actually issued just last year) proposes that “… olfactory biometrics may include odorants that a body generates when odor evaporates from and/or any portion thereof. As discussed herein, these odorants may be collectively referred to as a ’smellprint.’ Biometric security system 2202 may include a biometric sensor 2204 which may be configured with an electronic sensor, a chemical sensor, and/or an electronic or chemical sensor configured as an array of chemical sensors, wherein each chemical sensor may detect a specific odorants, or smell. In another embodiment, biometric sensor 2204 may be configured as a gas chromatograph, spectrometer, conductivity sensor, piezoelectric sensor and/or other hardware and/or software that facilitates the capture of biometric data from the person such as, for example, scanning, detecting or otherwise sensing a smellprint of cardmember.”

The biometric security system will not rely on human olfactory prowess but on an “e-nose” device such as a wand designed to pull air into a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry chamber to sample the scent signature of the presenter against the scent signature embedded into his card.

So, yeah, if that guy at the mini-mart asks for a sniff of your armpit before ringing up your Pepsi and Fritos, it’s still weird.