Endorphin Branding™: The Scent of a Winner

No one who hasn’t spent several hours in an overcrowded stadium under the brutal mid-day Florida sun could appreciate the atmosphere at Barack Obama’s rally yesterday. By noon, those of us who crammed into Dunedin’s Knology Park were scampering to create a patch of shade with everything from our Obama T-shirts to our Obama buttons. By the time the Senator took the stage around 2:00, while we were by no means an ugly crowd, we sure were a sunburned, soggy, malodorous one. Of all the thoughts that might have entered my mind as this historic candidate appeared in the flesh right before my eyes, the first one I was conscious of was, “Russell is right!”

The “Russell” to whom I refer is Whiff-Guy C. Russell Brumfield, and the theory he had set forth which was compelling enough to override my thoughts at such a monumental moment was this: “Endorphin branding™ is the use of scent as a means of imprinting a highly emotional, positive experience in tandem with a targeted signature scent, which can be reintroduced at a later time to trigger and recreate the desired response. This strategy should be implemented at political events, which are positively charged environments ripe for this type of scent branding.”

In short, if a fresh, invigorating “Change We Need” signature-scent had been wafted through that sweltering stadium a few moments before Barack Obama’s appearance shifted our focus from our physical discomfort to the wild euphoria of meeting our (knock on wood) next president in the flesh, the collective sigh of appreciation would have been clearly audible–and not one of us present would have ever forgotten that scent or the emotional impact of the historic moment in which we first encountered it.

While the idea that endorphin branding™ could provide the winning edge in this tight presidential race which has already seen such innovative campaign efforts is nothing new to Russell, it was only Tuesday–the day before Obama’s Florida rally–that his concept exploded in the media, from Reuters, MSNBC, Morningstar, Netscape Celebrity, Good Morning Silicon Valley, the Hollywood Reporter, the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch, The Atlantic, and The Scent Blog to Yahoo Finance in the US, Canada, and the UK & Ireland, and beyond.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones compares the concept to the subliminal advertising used to peddle “Mokie-Coke” in Frederick Pohl’s hilarious The Merchants’ War, noting that Pohl’s science fiction “doesn’t seem quite so much like science fiction after reading about endorphin branding™, does it?” Over at ClusterFlock, the idea has readers speculating on the scent of our current administration (”A Baptist church that has just been exited by a bunch of white people” seems to be the consensus).

“With so many voters still ‘undecided,’ it may be time for McCain and Obama to bring out the big guns: perfume,” says Metro Boston’s Ned Ehrbar, his tongue firmly lodged against his cheek when he claims to find the subliminal voter manipulation of endorphin branding™ “…not creepy at all.”

Newsweek’s Andrew Romano finds the concept to be the “Weirdest. Strategy. Ever.” and highlighted the suggestion of “Brit” as to which scents might be employed by the candidates: “McCain: Redwood, burnt Hickory, toothpaste, and wet cardboard covered with English Leather Timberline for Men. Obama: Basketball leather, a hint of Acqua Di Gio by Giorgio Armani, and a new car with Little Trees Vanillaroma air freshener.”

That much of the mainstream media draws a chuckle from the concept of endorphin branding™ is not surprising. Neither are the ensuing comments on their sites which, for the most part, seem to hover somewhere between amusement and contempt. To anyone outside the world of scent marketing, sure, the whole idea seems at once frightening (remember the uproar over the usage of visual and audio subliminal messaging in the 1970s?) and humorous (not only is the explosion of recent research charting the effectiveness of scent marketing largely unknown to the public, anything that has to do with Noses or Smells is funny–I don’t know why, it just is). I can only assume that none of these journalists or commenters are familiar with last December’s South Korean presidential race. In a semi-covert operation called The Perfume of the President, staffers applied the already-well-documented success of commercial scent branding to the campaign of Lee Myung-bak. From the start of his campaign, Great Korea, a scent designed to evoke feelings of “hope, victory, and passion,” was sprayed into the crowds at the candidate’s public rallies. On December 19, volunteers staffed the voting booths to make sure the same scent filled the air as voters cast their ballots. As this former mayor of Seoul was a frontrunner from the get-go, we may never know precisely how great an influence “the Perfume of the President” exerted over the results, but we do know that now-President Lee Myung-bak left his competition in the dust, receiving 48.7% of the vote–nearly as many as all ten other candidates, combined.

And, in sifting through this week’s media avalanche on the subject–after my own epiphany at the Obama rally yesterday–I’m finding that some insiders have begun weighing in. This reply to the Newsweek piece by “pkjames” sums it up nicely:

“In regards to the “Scented Campaign” post, I thought I would share some personal experience there. In a campaign for City Council in Des Moines, Iowa that I managed, the candidate and I sprayed the candidates’ cologne on each mail piece – some 30,000 pieces of mail. The response was outstanding, bringing in calls of volunteers, campaign contributions and calls for yard signs – much more than a piece of literature with a similar message sent just days earlier.
Beyond message and timing, additional stimuli such as scent must be considered when contributing to a candidates’ image using scarce resources. Is endorphin branding bizarre? Of course it is, unless you’re dealing with securing political power, then wouldn’t it be just as bizarre not to use every means necessary to secure the most powerful elected position in the world?”