When you see a watch, it's easy to forget it. But when you smell something, it's forever. The smell goes directly to the emotional part of our brain.
— Daniel Fong of Skywork Design talks about the green tea fragrance used in Oriental Watch Co stores. Read more at Nose for business: Do scents make you spend? at CNN. Hat tip to Maria!
When Diamond’s was still around in Phoenix, every Christmas the store smelled of bayberry. Older Phoenicians still swoon over the memory of that scent. Many chains have a scent of their own. There is a definitely one at Walgreens and the perfumed, plastic, leather, slighty toxic smell when you enter a TJMaxx revs me up for the thrill of the hunt. It is a comforting sort of branding. Good article and nice to know about Skywork Design.
Agree w/ that TJ Maxx smell!
I swear they use fragrance inside Heathrow Airport in the corridors leading to the gates. It smelt kind of fruity when I walked through the corridors and I think I saw electric fragrance diffusers there. I wonder when they started that, because I didn’t notice them the last time I was there.
Lots of public spaces are scented now. It kind of annoys me.
Certain department stores and hotel chains have signature, very subtle scents, which they add to their HVAC system so people will feel refreshed. There is a reason why you feel somewhat better and more luxurious when you walk into these places, even from within a mall. (Better lighting also helps.)
It is pretty easy to imagine Heathrow adding such an effort for the expected tourist rush for the Olympics and Jubilee.
Now, if the Brits can only get it though their heads that Springsteen always plays for at least three hours. (My very limited experience is that Sir Paul likes to give a nice meaty performance too.).
And then there are the places where it isn’t so subtle! A&F, for instance.
Last year, I went on a regrettable trip to Las Vegas (Hey, some one told me everybody has to go there once. Not true). I was at a professional convention at a slightly- off-the- main- strip, convention center/ casino/hotel.*
The moment I walked in I got a severe migrane. It took me half a day to realize that the sickening order contributing this migrane was not a quick spray of a low price airfreshner, but the hotel’s scent pumped i to mask the smell of low oxygen, tobacco smoke and stress of the casino floor.
Fortunately, I was able to leave with a companion to go to the Grand Canyon a day or so later, which was the only thing that cured the migrane.
*Non Fragrance Related Aside For Readers Who Are U.S. Tax payers. You may recall a recent scandal about a GSO convention in Las Vegas. The hotel I was atwas not the casino/convention hotel that the General Services Organization had used to tax payer money fund a “morale boosting trip” for their executives. THe GSO folks did not locate a cost savings location. The GSO booked themselves into the newest, fanciest place on the strip. The GSO is he organization in charge of nearly every federal office buiding, and exists a seperate agency to keep each department from wasting money. Despite this mission and control of federal buildings, the GSO apparently was unable to find some tax payer owned rooms for their meeting. I bet the place they booked had areally awesome atmospheric scent.
I adore Vegas in small quantities, but yes, the casinos are highly scented, and often full of cigarette smoke to boot. Best to stay in a hotel w/o a casino if you can.
On our honeymoon, we were staying at a hotel in Madrid that was so well scented. http://mario.room-matehotels.com/index.php/en
It could recommend the hotel for a lot of reasons, but just the smell in the lobby was so sexy 🙂