Friday, April 3, 2009

Smell

Good day to everyone following my blog! I hope that you are well and that all continues to go well for you throughout the day. Today's blog is the final component of "Playing on the Senses." Today, I will address the sense of smell and how it is used to engage us as consumers.

After today's blog I will be doing something that all of us at The WIN Firm feel is the best way to educate anyone interested in the inner-workings of a marketing campaign. We are going to share our strategies for various projects as we work on them. This is an open invitation into our world of marketing.

Why would we share our "secrets?" The answer we have is that those in marketing already know and understand these concepts, so they really are not secrets. Secondly, everyone is a marketer by the following definition: Managing perception. Lastly, we hope you become engaged in our activities and that you discover ways our strategies might help you come up with something even better than we are doing.

Our work is to serve our partnering clients, and the best way to do that is being open to new and old ideas that work. Therefore, I invite you to comment freely (please be polite) as you follow along on various campaigns.

Now that I have informed you on what is to come, it is time to move back to our topic for today, learning how our sense of smell impacts us.

Smell
Have you ever been walking outside and suddenly began recalling a particular time in your life? This recollection of time was not anything you were event thinking about as your walk started, but for some reason you are now drawn into a moment in time that has you thinking and feeling. How did this happen? There are several various causes for this to happen, but the one I want to focus on is our sense of smell.

Walking outside, you might have passed by a honeysuckle bush and the aroma of that bush immediately triggered a moment in your life when you smelled that same aroma. What you were feeling at an earlier point in life comes back to you, and suddenly, you feel a sense of dejavu. What feelings do you have after smelling a honeysuckle bush? Can this smell of honeysuckle perhaps be used to capture that feeling and turn it into an opportunity for a company to engage you?

Most of us have probably heard stories about various restaurants turning their exhausts outwards so that you smell what they are cooking as you pass by. I will even bet that most of you know the reason behind this strategy; to make you hungry! Restaurants do not have to really put too much effort into making things smell good, but they do need to make sure their smell makes you hungry. So, what does make you hungry? A grilled burger or steak? French fries?
Whatever you are thinking of right now is what restaurants are thinking too.

Have you ever opened a magazine that had perfume samples to smell? Did you read the rest of the magazine? Could you tell me what magazine it was that had the sample if I let you smell the sample again? Think about it for a moment, and even try it to see if you can recall a particular magazine. I even welcome your comments on this little test.

The point I am making by suggesting a smell test is that their are ways we as marketers can use smells to evoke certain feelings from people. If you are a skeptical, please pass by your local mall and tell me what you think. I will bet what you think is somewhat influenced by a smell that has triggered neurons in your brain and sent them flying. Try it and see! Once you do, you will discover how smell can be used as a marketing strategy.






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2 comments:

  1. I love the smell of the first grass cutting of the spring. Reminds me of every spring I've been through and brings back that feeling of excitement as winter has finally passed.

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  2. Great post Chris - whoop whoop! I love your writing style, it's fresh, quirky and packed with substance!
    Keep pumping out the gold nuggets!
    High fives
    Sam Mutimer - Twitter - @sammutimer

    http://letsrefresh.com.au/blog/

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