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.
Read more

Traditions Make Long Standing Brands

Where rights are about joining the club, and rituals are about belonging to the club, traditions are more about the rules of the club. Tradition is about attitude, culture, ethics, opinion, legend, even myth. Tradition of a brand doesn’t have to really have a basis, other than it is a tradition that is respected. Politics is a good example. Why is one person a Democrat? Very likely he came from a long line of Democrats, and even though he votes a straight ticket, he may not be able to articulate his reasons very well, because he is a Democrat out of tradition. Another man might be a Chevy man. He has always bought Chevrolets, and his father was a Chevy man. These people do exist, but they are slowly becoming extinct.
Read more

The Key to Scripting

Creating a great script is key to any endeavor in engaging an audience, and scripting in the fields of design, marketing, branding, or theater is relatively all the same. It contains a series of well-placed events that tell an interesting story that the audience buys into. You will notice the key-word event or events. Events are what make the world go-round. In describing emotional experiences, people talk about specific events in their lives. The word event is simply a description of a happening. Events describe what happens. Great events make great happenings. Good scripting merely involves a series of active, interesting happenings in the storyline. What’s happening in your storyline? Concerning your product, what happens when the consumer encounters it, opens it, or uses it?
Read more

Everything Smells…and that’s a GOOD Thing!

Scent is a biological mechanism used for recognition, communication, and signaling. Some scents alert us to danger. Other aromas contribute to our sexual arousal. Applied correctly, under the right conditions, scent also promotes health and improves cognitive functions, like memory, learning, and alertness.
Read more

Scentator Al Franken, Circa 1976

So, how does a former Saturday Night Live writer make the leap from late-night comedian to state senator (for argument’s sake, we’ll allow that this is actually a leap)? For Al Franken, the answer might lie in an olfactory tip he gleaned from a pal about thirty years earlier: “Don’t worry about your breath and your armpits, Al. It’s your personality that stinks!”

Enter “Heavy Changes Ego Spray,” which “comes in fifteen different personality types including Little Boy, Rock Star, Aggressive, and Petulant.”

Okay, okay. Early-Endorphin-Branding™-in-an-Aerosol-Can may not have really garnered the votes - or even the girl - for Franken, but this clip from the 1976 film Tunnel Vision is still a click-worthy giggle for Franken fans…for the hair alone!

Sagging Real Estate Market Demands a Fresh Approach

The housing bubble days when selling your home was as simple as listing with a realtor and waiting for the offers to pour in are gone, says ReMax commitment broker Tom Manolas. Sellers who want to score in the current buyers’ market need to do more than mow the lawn and tidy up the foyer, they need a serious edge on the competition. And it should come as no surprise to Whiff afficianados that that edge might lie in appealing to the buyer’s most primitive and emotional sense. In a nutshell, How does your house smell?
Read more

This Multi-Sensory Century

The trillion dollar automobile industry is a prime example of products that incorporate most all of the elements of a successful script—joy, APS, storytelling, humanizing, rites, rituals and traditions, and multi-sensory design.
Read more

The Humanization of Your Brand

Does your own brand contain the APS proposition and subsequent multi-sensory elements that enhance that proposition? Does your package or product contain the elements of a good script? By seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching your product—does it create anticipation, or contain the element of surprise? What’s the toy in your Cracker Jack box? Read more

The Sacredness of Your Brand

It may seem a bit far-fetched to speak of your brand as being of a sacred nature, but really successful brands are sacred to their fans. Think of how Apple users, Starbucks loyalists, NASCAR enthusiasts, or Dead Heads relate to these brands. Brand loyalty seems such an inefficient description of how these admirers feel about their relationships. Sacredness means a feeling of reverence for a unique, special, venerable idea. When we consider something sacred, it has a certain devotional quality, immune from criticism, devoid of dissenting opinion. When we hold a brand sacred, if pressed, we may even admit that we don’t think that we can live without it. I personally never fly without my supply of Airborne. I ritualistically take a dose before my flight, during my flight, and afterwards. If I find that I run out of my supply in a foreign place where it is not for sale, I will have it shipped to me. Now that’s reverence.
Read more

Stewardship and Social Responsibility

“Scent marketing, especially at the scale proposed by Brumfiled [sic], clearly intrudes into basic human rights issues. Scent marketers are deliberately designing and releasing substances into the air that target and affect our brains, without our express permission, without a medical license, and without proving the safety of the products with independent testing and government regulation. How is this different from someone slipping drugs into drinks without permission?”
–from The Canary Report, January 11, 2009

P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right,” so it appears I lose on both scores with The Canary Report, which managed to both liken me to a drug-pushing-mickey-slipping-date-rapist AND misspell my name. But that’s beside the point.
Read more

Next Page »