You may think you make your own buying decisions. But not for long.
Soon, your nose will tell you how to spend your money.
According to an article in today’s NY Times, more and more companies are scenting their products. And our noses are hyp-mo-tized! The article talked about a scientific study that proves this technique works:
In one experiment, the researchers, posing as marketers, asked 151 college students to examine a brand-name pencil, along with a 10-point list of its selling points. Some of the pencils were unscented, and some had been dosed with pine or tea tree oil. Two weeks later, the average student could not remember a single attribute of the scentless pencil, but remembered more than three attributes of the scented pencils. Students were not provided with the scent, which could jog their memory.
Now, an unscented pencil is actually pencil-scented. That’s its own smell. But other than that, this experiment makes sense, right? Smell memory is so strong. I wish people’s names could be scented. That would save a lot of embarrassment.
Then again, what if someone’s name had a scent I hated? I’d probably hate that person.
Be it names or pencils, you never know what effect a smell is going to have on different people. Picking a scent for your product is a big crapshoot. I can see why pine might seem like a safe bet – because it’s naturally fresh and smells like Christmas. But I probably wouldn’t buy something that smelled like pine, because I associate it with:
- Taxi cab air fresheners, which try hard but always fail to mask BO or stale cigarette smoke or the driver’s bologna sandwich.
- A Glade Plug-in, usually found in the same kind of bathrooms that have shag-rug toilet covers.
- Pre-Christmas. When I smell real, fresh pine I get the “haven’t bought anyone’s present yet” feeling. And the feeling that goes with it, a humbug anxiety I call “where did all these people come from and why did I choose to walk on 5th Avenue?”
Another big mistake, if you want me to buy your pencil or develop brand loyalty, would be to to use peach scent. Whenever I smell something peach-scented, I don’t think of peach. I think of peach soap. I hate peach soap. Another thing that makes me think of plush toilet covers. This aversion has been handy, actually: I used to be severely addicted to Tasti-D-Lite, until that stinky soap store Sabon started popping up next to every Tasti-D-Lite location. You can’t buy Tasti-D-Lite in my neighborhood without smelling some really shitty soap.
Now that I’m thinking about it, Mr. Vice President in Charge of Product Scent: If you’re going to use a turn-off smell like pine or peach to sell me something, you may as well go the distance and use one of these other evocative aromas:
- Talcum powder. My parent’s bathroom closet always did, and still does, smell like Johnson and Johnson baby powder. As a kid, when I looked in that closet, I’d get a whiff of powder and an eye full of tampons, Tucks medicated wipes, and other grownup things I didn’t want to see.
- Old lettuce. This makes me think of slugs, which I used to capture and then keep for several days in a jar with a leaf of iceburg or romaine. One time, a slug escaped and I couldn’t find him anywhere. Then, later, when I was eating Rice Krispies, I tasted something awful that made me gag. Looking back, I think it was just a burnt Krispy, but when my mother said, “maybe you ate the slug,” I believed her.
- Inside of a plaster cast. You know, when the doctor removes it? (If you’ve never smelled this, it’s just like the inside of a sweaty leather watch band.) When I was 11, I accidentally sat on my sister’s arm and broke her wrist. I was a chubby kid. Can you imagine the embarrassment of breaking someone’s bone just by sitting on it? Yet I was compelled to run into my sister’s room and sniff the musky, graffiti’d cast, which she’d kept as a memento of her pain. So to me, that unwashed skin odor is the smell of shame.
- Burnt hair. In first grade, at someone’s class birthday party, Nina Lurie’s* hair caught fire from the candle in her cupcake. Ever since, I’ve been so terrified this would happen to me that I won’t even light matches. On the other hand, I still love the smell of candle wax because it reminds me of cup cake frosting, which you of course lick off the candle. That would be a good pencil scent.
- Outhouse. I know, nobody likes the smell of outhouse. But I’m especially repulsed by it because the hippy camp I went to for 3 summers didn’t have indoor plumbing — just outhouses. Except they weren’t called outhouses, they were called KYBOs. Stood for Keep Your Bowels Open. KYBOs had no doors for privacy – just three walls, and a plank with two holes in it, so you and a buddy could sit and do your business side-by-side. It’s one thing going to the bathroom in a stinky place, but couple that with fear of having someone join you? I dreaded the KYBO.
- Dog urine. Again, no one’s favorite. But here’s why it effects me in a special way: to train our Cairn Terrier puppy, who we got when I was nine, we had this fake dog urine product you were supposed to sprinkle on newspaper. It smelled just like the real deal. The whole bottle fell over one day and spilled inside the broom closet, so our kitchen pantry smelled of dog pee for about 20 years.
- Eternity by Calvin Klein. I wore it in 1990, junior year of college. I also used to run 10 miles a day, so my little room smelled like sweaty lycra gym pants and sickly sweet perfume.
- Temple Rodeph Sholom on the Upper West Side. I know it’s not fair to group my synagogue with dog urine. I had my bat mitzvah there. But the building has a particular scent, and I’ve never walked in there without thinking of Hebrew School, which my parents forced me to attend. The teacher, Rivka Cohen, used to scream “SHEKET!!!” (Hebrew for “shut up”) and throw the blackboard eraser at our heads.
- Spearmint. Sounds like a natural winner, right? But spearmint jelly is what we used to put on our leg of lamb. Bright green, from the jar. I have no problem with this combo, but to me spearmint equals leg of lamb. I don’t want anything to smell like leg of lamb except for leg of lamb.
Now, if you really want my brand loyalty, I recommend one of these scents:
- Bubble gum. More specifically, bubble gum eraser. That’s what my whole collection of Hello Kitty stuff used to smell like. I loved Hello Kitty.
- Basement. I’ve always loved that smell, possibly because the damp basement in our country house was where we kept the pinball machine I got for my birthday. It wasn’t a real pinball machine like they had in arcades – just a toy store version that always went on “TILT.” But still, the basement was the place for fun.
- Sawdust. In grade school, shop class was my favorite. Even though I couldn’t hammer straight. And even though the shop teacher, Ralph, was a big man who sometimes pretended he didn’t hear your question until you’d asked four times. At which point he’d yell, “I HEARD YOU!” This is especially intimidating from a large man holding an electric drill. I guess I really loved making things with wood.
- Shellac. See above. The most exciting part of shop class is when you finish building and get to the shellac phase.
- My husband. I know, that’s so corny. I loathe commercials where a woman is dancing around wearing her husband’s hat and sniffing his manly shirt. But my husband smells really good. He wears Commes Des Garcon “Incense.” I guess it’s trademarked, but I’d definitely buy a pencil that smelled like that.
What smell would make you whip out your credit card? Or not? Share them. I could talk about smells all day.
*Names changed to protect the partially singed.
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If peoples name can be scented then I guess a lot will be truly embarrass as not all individuals are having real good sounded name. However, names were not basically, the utmost basis that we could say she/he does have a bad name. It’s more on the attitude that each one possesses.
Dont waste money for just a smell that never last long.
Dont waste money for just a smell that never last long.
I agree on so many of the smells. Shellac and those Hello Kitty erasers in particular – full on forgot about those. I would add to the good list: the smell of a freshly-opened bag of Twizzlers. It’s a scent I should associate with compulsive eating and shame…..but I don’t. Add to the list: a just-opened bag of candy corn and a bag of fun-sized Milky Ways. Just the wrappers smell good. But I’m revealing too much.
Smell I’ll never forget, though I haven’t smelled it forever: There was something my dog Max used to eat that made his pee smell like apple juice. I swear, it was the weirdest thing. I will always remember standing on West 77th street holding the leash while Max squat down – Despite being a boy, he peed like a girl. At the time, I found this mortifying. – and pee a steaming puddle of Motts 100% Pure.
Love the blog!
Oh, candy corn and Milky Ways – for sure. Nothing is better than the halloween smell. Although it gives me a slight anxiety because I was always so tense about my costume and whether it was the best one.
You should have figured out what made your dog pee apple juice and marketed it. Too bad it didn’t do the same for #2.
I love having your comments, AP!
I think it was mandatory to wear Eternity in 1990.
One time I was in a carpool on the way to a soccer game when I was 13. My friend’s 90 year old grandmother was driving (and smoking). Her poodle that smelled like wet old homeless mutt was in the front seat. A pine air freshener was hanging from the rear view mirror and we drove by a dead skunk. I will never forget that mixture of smells as long as I live. Every time I happen to drive over the bridge that was on that route, the smell returns.
Another hideous smell I can’t forget was when I was about to drink instant iced tea in a plastic tupperware glass at my friend’s house when I was about 10. I almost threw up before I drank it.
Adam word Karl Lagerfeld’s Photo in the early 90s when we first met…I like that smell…I still keep a sample of it.
I will just think about Hello Kitty smells and maybe Love’s Baby Soft tonight to clear the icky smells from my memory.
Oh man, that’s a potent cocktail of smells. I would never forget that either.
With the iced tea, was it the smell of the plastic?
I have a really bad taste memory I associate with tea. After dinner in the college cafeteria, I always used to make tea (while everyone else ate ice cream). One time, I’d had a cup of clam chowder, and I guess I used the same saucer under my tea cup. Some tea sloshed out and I slurped it from the saucer. Yeah, you know it: clam tea.
I love reading your blogs! I always end up laughing.
Lavendar has to be one of my favorite smells. I also love the smell of snowmobile exhaust.
Laura – thiis is a subject close to my hear as I am extremely smell sensitive – and find that many smells that most people love make me gag (ie rosemary) – I can’t wear any perfume, or scented lotion – or be too close to anyone that does – thank god I don’t live in NY anymore or I’d be puking on the subway all the time!
Smells I particularly despise: moth balls and mexican food – In fact, I always says that mexican food tastes like dirty armpits smell. Well, I used to always say that until my husband made me stop – cause he really loves Mexican food! And sorry, but I HATE the basement smell – our basement is unfinished and will remain that way so none of us ever have to spend one minute down there (Allie has a mean case of “basement envy” every time she goes to a friends’ house).
I am partial to the oh-so-trite smells of mint, cinnamon, and chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. And I LOVE the Hello Kitty bubble gum eraser smell – that, and rubber cement…
When I was a little girl, I was weirdly fond of the smell of the dry cleaners – that’s about as close as I ever came to doing drugs.
I love hot tea and I hate iced tea. The fact that it was artificial iced tea being served in a scratched up old plastic tupperware cup (I hate drinking out of plastic)…made it over-the-top gag-inducing.
How about perfume that gives me an instant migraine, even if I just pass someone on the street that’s wearing it…I don’t know what causes that…OK smell expert, let me know.
When I worked in the ad biz, we had a client, now deceased, who wore so much cologne that our conference room reeked for days afterward. Not sure what Ron died of, but all that Aramis was no doubt a contributing factor.
Have you also noted the strong correlation between over-scenting and body weight? Particularly guys who are heavy love to douse themselves with obscene amounts of foo-foo. Perhaps it’s compensation, e.g. “Well, she may not be attracted to me because I’m fat, but will she ever do a handstand in her panties when she gets a whiff of this eau de cologne. Sad.
you know that smell when clothes and towels are left in the washing machine way after the cycle is over? its kinda like a moldy, BO scent. i had a BF once who hung his jeans to dry but always left them fermenting in the washer way too long before they made their way onto hangers. that odor would then cling to his skin. gross!!!!!
I do know that smell! Fortunately for me, I don’t have that sharp a nose. My husband, on the other hand, can smell dirty towel from two city blocks away. So he’s plagued when our towels are not-so-fresh. Me, I can keep on using them. That’s probably not something I should brag about.
I like how Chris smells early in the morning when he’s all sleepy and warm. I leave for work before he does so every morning I’ll stick my nose in his neck or hair, take a big whiff, then kiss him goodbye. Makes me smile for most of the morning. For sprays I like this one Febreze has out now called Cranberries and Frost. It’s got a little citrus in it and I think that’s what does it. My favorite fragrance is Calyx – grapefruit is the top note, then there’s all sorts of other goodness. Oh, and I like the smell of gasoline. Not on my hands, just coming out of the pump.
Oh man, when I worked at a certain magazine I won’t name, we had a guy who wore so much cologne that long after he quit, the phone at his cubicle still reeked. We called it the Cologne Phone.