brand recognition is huge. everyone wants consumers to know their logo and their colour scheme. tiffany blue, ups brown, victoria’s secret pink. sure the look is important, but what of the other senses?
some brands push the user experience, creating a more immersive atmosphere of careful lighting and a company-approved music playlist. hollister keeps their stores dark and practically vibrating with whatever pop-punk artist is currently topping the charts. urban outfitters plays through a seemingly never-ending mixed tape of indie artists. more conservative brands keep their elevator music as background noise.
almost every successful brand appeals to our eyes. a good many others also appeal to our ears. incredibly few, however, appeal to our noses, especially considering how tied to memory our sense of smell is. think about old books. they have that vanilla-old-paper smell that so many people are loyal to. it’s not about the way the book looks. it’s not about how new or stylish it is. it’s the very recognisable, very specific smell.
some shops play with smell, but not with smell as branding. they create or carry too many cucumberpearmelon concoctions to be identified with any one particular scent. walk by a body shop or a bath and body works or a sephora. the smells are overwhelming, but not identifiable.
the one brand that does it right: abercrombie. walk past any of their stores, and you’ll smell it. that frat-boy-fresh-from-the-beach scent, that scent that you can’t associate with anything but that brand. whether you love or hate the store, it’s a scent that triggers a very specific reaction. for regular abercrombie customers, it’s a “shop! buy!” reaction. and if abercrombie is lucky, they’ll sell a bottle of the scent with the customer’s clothing purchase.
