What is that smell?

Have you heard about scent branding? Seems all types of businesses are hiring companies to come in and flavor their air with custom scent blends to entice customers or perhaps cover up bad odors.
On one level, it makes sense, I guess. Realtors tell you to bake cookies or pie when you have an open house to sell your home. Sales of perfumes, colognes, air fresheners, deodorants, candles and incense are strong – we definitely care about how we, and the things around us, smell.
I remember working on a magazine story years ago about a company that had begun as a spice importer but had transitioned into creating flavorings and scents. I was taken into one of the company’s labs and shown the rows of small bottles containing clear liquids. The labels told the story. "Ripe strawberries." "Past ripe strawberries." Wheat bread." "Banana." "Vidalia onion."
The person I was interviewing took sample bottles and blotted them on a piece of paper for me to smell.
Some smells were truly astonishing in how much they resembled a specific food.
Analyzing food smells is pretty easy these days. Technicians identify molecules of different elements as they are shed by a particular food and can then reassemble that smell sensation by mixing together a variety of chemicals – smell from a lab.
I had to take my son to Mayfair Mall recently and we parked in the back, near the movie theater. As we walked across the parking lot, we were hit by strong odors wafting from the mall. "Abercrombie and Fitch," my son said. The store's signature smell was escaping into the atmosphere from the mall's exhaust fans.
Smell has an incredibly strong emotional resonance. I just read an article online last week about a study that followed people who had lost their sight and people who had lost a sense of smell.
After a year, by a strong margin, the people who were blind reported being much happier than the people who could no longer smell. We rely on smell far more than we are conscious of. It's primal. Think about how much of our survival eons ago depended on a sense of smell. Our ancestors could smell fear, danger, rotten food and mates. We think we don't.
The two times I have gone to a certain large local grocery store, I have been hit by the strong, to me, smell of ammonia by the seafood cases. I wouldn't buy fish there.
Years ago, a grocery store on the east side near my apartment used to bring out displays of warm, fresh baked Italian bread at 4:30 p.m. I was hardly ever able to resist buying a loaf.
A grocer using “smellavision” might seem a smart move (that smell of freshly baked bread will put many shoppers in a better mood and trigger their appetites, making them spend more), but it hints at desperation and a lack of internal controls.
Because, think of it, a store stocked with fresh, vital, whole foods - fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, fish, whole grain breads and carefully prepared meals - I can't really think of much that ought to smell better than that.
If you're doing it right, if you're ensuring the freshness and quality of the things you sell, well, then a grocery store smell is just about ambrosia.
Care for your stock, hire people passionate about the foods they sell, and you sure as hell won't need to pipe in artificial smells.

Comments

[Anu Skinner]

As a person married to a woman with multiple chemical sensitivities, this strikes me as yet another way to pollute our environment. These chemical scents have more than just an emotional response in people; there is also a physical response. One that can have deleterious effects on the health of people who are already sensitive, and to those who are at the threshold of over exposure to environmental pollutants.