Nikon & Olfactory Imagery

The always-innovative folks at Nikon are celebrating the launch of their new range of COOLPIX compact cameras - which “capture memories in more vivid detail than ever before” - with an intriguing study into the connection between visual and olfactory recall.

The study, which was conducted across 23 countries, revealed that 47% of Brits can remember the scent associated with a photograph, while just under a quarter said they would actively take a picture of something based purely on the way it smells. The results also show that British women are more likely to pay attention to the scent of their surroundings when taking a picture than men, with over a quarter stating they would capture a photograph of something that smells appealing – for example a rose garden.

Commenting on the research, Dr Rachel Herz, a leading world expert in the psychological science of scent and Professor at Brown University, said: “This research shows just how powerful the link between our memories and the sense of smell really is. While a photograph can visually remind us of a particular moment in time, if it is accompanied by scent it will elicit even more emotional and evocative memories – more than any other memory trigger.”

“This research into the scents associated with memories shows that not only do Europeans have an amazing ability to remember certain scenes and locations based on scents and smells, the majority also make a conscious effort to maximise the power of these memories for themselves,” says Mark Pekelharing, Product Manager for Consumer Products at Nikon. “Our new range of COOLPIX compact cameras can capture memories better than ever before – although they don’t quite capture smell just yet, they certainly evoke it!”

The Scent of a Pretty Woman

“It has been a life-long dream of mine to create a perfume that speaks to women everywhere,” says Barbara Orbison, wife of the late great Roy Orbison, whose amazing operatic voice touched the hearts of several generations. “I believe that within every woman there is a pretty woman and my signature fragrance helps bring that out that inner confidence and spirit so they feel strong, empowered, sensual and pretty.”

Pretty Woman immediately brings to mind that iconic Roy Orbison song and, of course, the favorite fairy tale movie. “Like the notes of a song, the notes of Pretty Woman Perfume open to reveal a complex melody of florals, spices and woods. Its crisp, luminous bergamot top note evolves to reveal a full, vivacious middle note accord of stargazer lily, red rose and carnation. The fragrance’s base note accord of fresh amber, patchouli, vanilla, atlas cedar and sacred incense combine with a lingering everlasting warmth and harmony.”

At a suggested retail price of $80, the fragrance is garnering rave reviews across the internet and striking a harmonious chord with pretty women everywhere.

Olfactory Fact #217: If Vinegar Smells Like Easter, You’ve Been Endorphin Branded™

The lifelong association of the smell of vinegar with the childhood ritual of dyeing Easter eggs is an excellent example of the effectiveness of Endorphin Branding™, which refers to a means of imprinting a highly emotional, positive experience in tandem with a targeted signature scent that can be reintroduced at a later time to trigger and recreate the desired response.

Australia Takes a Whiff of S’marketing

The scent marketing phenomenon is making a huge splash Down Under, according to “culture junkie” Marc Fennell! This week’s episode of Hungry Beast features a wealth of information from Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age as well as an appearance by “smell marketing (or s’marketing) guru, C. Russell Brumfield”! Check it out RIGHT HERE!

Olfactory Fact #39: Scent makes you Smarter

When 151 college students were asked to evaluate pencils using a 10-point checklist, the average student couldn’t remember a single attribute of the unscented pencils two weeks later, but remembered three attributes of the scented pencils.

Non-Scents in the Workplace?

So, which major U.S. city would you expect to ban municipal employees from wearing perfume, cologne, aftershave, and even deodorant to work? If you picked the Motor City, you are - ironically - absolutely right.

In 2008, a Detroit city planner filed a lawsuit claiming a co-worker’s perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. Susan McBride filed her lawsuit under the American with Disabilities Act, and was awarded $100,000. The civil suit sparked the city of Detroit to make it official. A notice will go into the new employee handbook and be written in the Americans with Disabilities Act training, along with warning placards throughout the three buildings, which include the Cadillac Square Building, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center and First National Building, asking employees to “refrain from wearing scented products.” The ban will also include scented candles, lotions, perfume samples from magazines, and spray or solid air fresheners.

“One of the things the city is going to have to figure out is how they enforce the policy they’ve agreed to,” said attorney John Holmquist. “The city is going to have to get involved in hygiene, I’d guess you’d say, which no employer wants to get involved in.”

Detroit appears to be the only major city - not only in the U.S. but on the entire North American continent - to enact such a ban. In the past, two Canadian cities - Halifax and Ottawa - have flirted with scent restrictions, but neither ever gained any traction.

Detroit’s decision to ban employees from using any scented products in the workplace has sparked an national controversy about how far is too far. With summer on the way, it seems likely that Detroit might at the very least need to re-think their inclusion of “deodorant” on the fragrance hit list.

Joy Junkies!

The rush of adrenaline is a powerful condition that offers the fleeting, manufactured, simulation of real joy. Along with the release of endorphins, it is the chemical relative to the condition of joy. The adrenaline rush is not the result of joy, but merely a condition that is experienced while in the midst of an APS event.
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Sniffing Out the Bad Guys

After Richard Reid’s bumbling 2001 attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoe, political satirist Bill Maher speculated on Reid having waged a drunken bet with his friends that he could cause Americans to have to take off their shoes before boarding planes - and suggested that we should be grateful that Reid had chosen shoes rather than underwear. Of course, on Christmas Day of 2009, Maher’s satire proved prophetic, and the impracticality of conducting a visual search of every piece of attire of every passenger boarding every plane became glaringly apparent.

It could be that what the TSA really needs - rather than a line of naked passengers at the security gates - is a shot of German ingenuity. Researchers at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have developed a network of electronic sniffing devices that can not only smell explosive chemicals hidden on a person, but identify the carrier even as he moves through a crowd. The new intelligent system uses a network of “chemical noses” to capture the smell of the explosives, then the system processes the acquired data, correlates it with the individual’s movements, and ultimately tracks him down.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics (FKIE) in Wachtberg have built such a prototype security system and named it HAMLeT (Hazardous Material Localization and Person Tracking). “HAMLeT will alert security personnel to suspicious individuals,” says FKIE department head Dr. Wolfgang Koch. The sensor data fusion process employs complex algorithms which allow HAMLeT to build up a precise image of pedestrian flows and connect a particular smell with a specific individual. “HAMLeT’s real achievement is its ability to collate all the data and convert it into a clear and accurate overall picture.”

In a trial involving the German Armed Forces, researchers at the FKIE proved the system’s ability to track down five mock terrorists carrying hidden explosives, but the scientists admit that the system currently has a tendency to produce false positives, rendering it too cumbersome to yet deploy. But with some refinement of the algorithms and perhaps the incorporation of ever-improving face-recognition technology, systems like this could become commonplace anywhere large crowds gather, from airports to sports stadiums.

Endorphin Branding™ To-Go

You may occasionally forget a face, or a favorite old tune, but - whether or not you are consciously aware of it - you will almost certainly never forget a smell. It’s a phenomenon the Whiff-Guys have dubbed Endorphin Branding™. And the design studio of kawamura-ganjavian has found a nifty way to bring the benefits of Endorphin Branding™ to the masses.

“One particular scent can bring back more memories than a thousand pictures. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to store smells the same way we store photographs? SCENTER is a depository of scents. Concentrated personal fragrances can be stored inside compact cartridges, their scent being released through a nozzle upon pressing the bellows thus evoking the memories embedded in them.”

Considering that one of my own earliest childhood memories is the miniature shetland pony given to me by my aunt when I was 3, I doubt the world at large would be flocking to the aroma of my SCENTER, but “to each, his own” is the very essence of Endorphin Branding™.

Wake Up and See the Coffee

A group of researchers at the University of Illinois have developed an inexpensive way to visualize scent through the use of specially developed inks. The colorimeter consists simply of a card with tiny polymer film squares that hold 36 designer dye drops, and came out of the lab of university chemist Kenneth Suslick. Each dye pigment changes color when exposed to certain chemicals, and the combination of the 36 exposes a unique chemical fingerprint for certain aromas, in effect painting a scent profile of the substance being measured.

Although the device will likely realize its greatest potential in security areas such as measuring toxic gasses, Dr. Suslick’s 17-year-old son best illustrated the myriad of potential uses when he applied it to the study of coffee aromas and was able to differentiate burned batches from perfectly perked.

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