This Teddy Bear is a Breath of Fresh Air!

What could be more soothing to a cranky-fatigued baby than a plush cuddly teddy bear? An aromatherapeutic plush cuddly teddy bear!

Lulabie®, a new brand emphasizing the importance of family rituals in daily routines for their children’s emotional balance and well-being, has just launched its first collection, the Lulabie® Aromatherapy Teddy Bears. The fuzzy little critters come in a variety of colors and are scented with a special “sleep well” formula including lavender oil, orange, thyme, and cardamon. A patent-pending scent technology creates a slow and constant release of the fragrance, allowing your little tyke to enjoy months of sweet dreams, and refills are then available so you can refresh the scent without replacing the bear your baby will no doubt have bonded with.

Lulabie®, winner of the prestigious 2009 Jury’s Award for Toy of the Year in Europe, is part of the Scent A Brand group, which develops high quality applications of long-lasting scented products. The Lulabie® bear gift sets retail for $29.95 and are available online at www.walmart.com and www.target.com.

Victoria’s Secret Scent Unveiled

Victoria’s Secret is celebrating the launch of their new signature fragrance with a bang at their Soho store in New York City, the first stop of a four-city media tour which will also include Los Angeles, Miami, and Dallas. Blended to capture “the sweet and seductive nature of the mega-watt supermodels who inspired it,” Bombshell combines fruity and floral notes for a “bold, confident, powerful and playful” fragrance.

Fragrance-lovers who purchase the Bombshell collection at the Soho launch on Friday, September 24 between 2pm and 5pm will be treated to a snootfull of extras, including free t-shirts, makeovers, personalized autographs from the Victoria’s Secret Supermodels, and a chance to participate in a “cover shoot” and see their faces on the cover of the VS catalog.

You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Smells You

The earliest was Elizabeth Taylor, whose White Diamonds launched in 1991 and remains a best-seller today. The latest is Lady Gaga, who has reportedly just signed a long-term licensing deal with Coty to begin creating fragrances under her name.

Perhaps the most flagrant-fragrant proof of the effectiveness of endorphin branding™ in advertising can be found in the tsunami of celebrity signature fragrances literally flooding the perfume market in recent years, a trend that now accounts for 23% of the Top 100 Women’s Fragrances. As Whiff-Aficianados know, the signature scent phenomenon is not just about selling perfume. It’s about solidifying brand recognition and loyalty – that’s endorphin branding™!

Just as a whiff of their proprietary White Tea scent is designed to instantly summon sweet memories of that fabulous getaway at the Westin Hotel where the memorable fragrance wafted through the lobby and restaurant and even your guest room, subtly but permanently stamping the association onto your brain–so should an expertly blended signature scent, once the association has been established, trigger an immediate recollection of your favorite celebrity.

Ah, Sugar-Sugar!

Pop singer Katy Perry’s new cd will hit the shelves next week with a little something extra - it smells like cotton candy!

The singer says her fans will get a whiff of spun sugar when they open Teenage Dream, Perry’s sophomore album release.

“I had this idea to have the actual booklet of the CD scented, which is something I had never heard of anyone else doing, especially since the cover picture was of me on a cotton candy cloud,” says Perry. “I said, ‘Can we make this happen?’ You know I always have these crazy ideas… and it happened!”

Whiff-Guy C. Russell Brumfield had the very same “crazy idea,” and there’s even more good news for Perry than the obviously beneficial Endorphin Branding™ of her image in her aromatic new release. “If globally branded products are indeed scented in the future, it will create great difficulty for many counterfeiting enterprises,” says Brumfield in his bestselling book, Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age. “As it stands today, when a DVD or CD is released in the United States, frequently the pirated version is made available on the street the same day. Scenting legitimate products may not reduce the demand for pirated copies, but it would certainly assist in detection of the fakes by the local constabulary.”

Forget the Steroids - Pass the Peppermint!

Can scent affect physical performance? Of course it can. Scent, as Whiff-fans know by now, can affect virtually everything. When psychologists at West Virginia’s Wheeling Jesuit University administered peppermint odors to weightlifters as they trained, the subjects were able to carry out increased numbers of repetitions and had better endurance. Other studies have produced similar results. When assessing performance on specific athletic tasks, athletes exposed to peppermint odor were able to complete a 400-metre dash more quickly, perform more push-ups, and demonstrate increased grip strength.

The implications of these findings were not lost on Dr. Bryan Raudenbush, who led the weightlifting study, and is now marketing an “endurance enhancing” peppermint nasal spray, Scentology, a “time-released, fully invigorating, fresh scent cue scientifically demonstrated to increase physical energy and performance” which “can be used to gain a competitive edge in athletics, or optimize your performance in the workplace.”

Traders Hotel Launches Signature Scent

When the former Hotel Jen was renovated and launched as Hong Kong’s first Traders Hotel on August 1st, it also became the first in the Traders’ fleet to incorporate the use of a signature scent in its public areas. The “tropical fruity-green” fragrance is supported by a “warm musk,” and will be introduced gradually in the other eleven Traders Hotels within the year.

The Traders properties are a more affordable alternative from Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts’, where Essence of Shangri-La is dispersed by an atomization system which features anti-bacterial and anti-smoke benefits as well.

A Whiff of Victorian Charm

With an eye toward the Victorian “vinaigrette” of smelling salts popular among fragile ladies prone to the “vapors” or simply adverse to unpleasant aromas, Erica Weiner Jewelry has recycled an old fashioned favorite for the new fashioned woman. The Perfume Locket Necklace is a gunmetal-plated perforated locket on a stainless steel chain which houses your choice of DS and Durga’s custom essential oil blends, Foxhunt or Empress Jingu.

The Great Pumpkin Scent

Research at the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation which found that a pumpkin pie-based mixture increased male sexual arousal by 40% appears to not have been lost on Tilda Swinton. The unconventional Scottish beauty has just launched her signature fragrance, Like This, and it smells just like Thanksgiving!

It was not the sexual side effects, however, but the longing to carry a reminder of her Scotland home while traveling which inspired the fragrance, according to the actress. “I thought about how great it would be if I could have a smell that would keep me at home wherever I was. So I started to think about my home smells, and the principal ingredients became ginger, baby carrot, pumpkin,” Swinton told New York Magazine. “I’m a November child—a pumpkin child—so this whole idea of orange is there.”

SMI Launches Scent Marketing Digest!

Congratulations to our friends at the Scent Marketing Institute on the official launch of the Scent Marketing Digest, the essential blog for scent marketing resources, industry experts, scent developers and scent solution providers!

“We are glad to be able to offer an additional platform for the exchange of opinions and information and to further contribute to building a solid, educated Scent Marketing community,” says founder and chief marketer Harald Vogt. “We invite you to participate, to make your thoughts and opinions known and to engage in a fruitful conversation that will bring the subject of Scent Marketing forward.”

Shape the Future at Shopper Insights in Action 2010!

Registration is open for this year’s Shoppers Insights In Action Conference on July 11 - 14 in Chicago, which will feature over 50 educational sessions and 75 speakers from such best-in-class brand and retail leaders as Procter & Gamble, Walgreens, JCPenney, Staples, Home Depot, Kraft Foods, The Coca-Cola Company and many more! Tracy Pepe, Founder & CEO of Nose Knows Consulting will kick things off with an interactive keynote session in which attendees will learn how a scent trail - or “silage” - drastically impacts shoppers’ behavior!

For more information or to register for this exciting event, just follow your nose to the conference website at www.shopperinsightsevent.com.

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