Word: smells
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...broaden the mix of people shopping for consumer electronics in its SonyStyle stores to include more women. "Our products are about seeing and hearing," says the stores' creative director, Christine Belich, referring to Sony's cameras, TVs and music gear, "so it seemed natural to add smell to create an immersive sensory experience...
When Van Epps met with SonyStyle's executive team to unveil the short list of smell contenders--carried in small glass vials in his metal lab briefcase--he asked each member to give personal preferences and professional assessments. He says that helps clients avoid having individual quirks (a hatred of apples caused by having to eat one every day after school or a resentment of violets because they call to mind being ditched on prom night) cloud the search for a suitable corporate scent. Each smelling session was limited to just a couple of samples, since the nose's ability...
...lead consumers around by the nose. "What might be delicate and delightful to one person is enough to give the next person a migraine," says Gabrielle Glaser, author of The Nose: A Profile of Sex, Beauty, and Survival. To Glaser, the idea that Sony would target women with a smell is patronizing. "It's like 'Oh, Mommy, we understand you.' So condescending...
Other businesses are signing on too, some choosing scents that carry apt connotations for particular products they want to sell, a technique called billboarding. Bloomingdale's, for instance, billboards the smell of baby powder in its infant-clothing department, while hints of lilac and coconut waft around the department store's intimate-apparel and swimsuit displays. One of ScentAir's most popular aromas, freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies, has been adopted widely by sellers of model houses and real estate agents in North Carolina to make prospective buyers feel at home the instant they walk in. Upscale ice cream chain...
Signature smells, like Sony's or Westin's, can cost between $5,000 and $25,000, depending on how complicated they are to design. Companies also pay monthly subscription fees to rent fan machines that disperse the scents into the air. Smaller retailers can buy simple smells--sage and pomegranate, rosemary eucalyptus, white ginger--off the rack for $100 a month, including fan rental. And ScentAir is expanding its repertoire by cooking up smells that are meant not to charm but to repel: last month it re-created the smell of burning electrical wire for a military simulation; earlier...