Why Your Brand Needs a Signature Scent: The Psychology of Scent Branding

Every impression is important. But the first, as the saying goes, is the most powerful. In business, a positive first impression can help make your brand stand out in an ocean of company names and brand logos. That’s a very potent thing when you’re trying to attract and keep customers.

If you want to take your brand to the next level, go beyond jingles, taglines, and logos. Take a page from the playbook of some of the world’s most successful businesses. Develop a signature scent that helps define it. You and your customers will be glad you did.

A signature scent is a smell associated specifically with your brand. Like the colors and shape of your logo and the message of your tagline, it helps define your brand to all who might discover it.

Examples include the White Tea scent, which the Westin Hotel brand is famous for. Clean, refreshing, and uplifting, it’s proven to be an ideal scent for travelers seeking high-quality hospitality. Nike’s signature smell—inspired by the smell of soccer cleats in grass and dirt and rubber sneakers on a basketball court—is used in their stores, to great effect. Its athletic foundation fits the brand.

Scent branding starts with that first impression, and keeps working like a silent, subtle ambassador for your brand. Reinforcing. Connecting. Influencing. And as it does, it helps create a signature identity for, and ambience around, your brand. To learn more about how it does this, let’s dig into the science.

Smells have a power no other sense has: they can transport us back in time, reminding us vividly of a time, place, or person from our past. Many of us associate the smell of a certain food, like fresh-baked cookies, with grandma’s kitchen. And most of us can recall catching a whiff of a certain perfume or cologne and being reminded of an old flame.

Digging into the science of scent and brand memory, we find answers to why. It has to do with the way aromas enter our brains, speeding along a direct highway to the limbic system. That special area in our brains controls mood, memory, and even emotion; it also helps process the aromas we smell every day. And scents that our olfactory bulbs recognize from before, well, they basically have special “keys” to unlock these moods and memories.

According to Frontiers in Behavioral Science, “In addition to odors that are strong enough to be consciously perceived, weak, potentially subconscious, ambient odors have been shown to influence mood states in a positive or negative manner, as well as intentions and actual food choices, buying intentions, and cleaning behavior.” [SOURCE]

Smells make a lasting impression, no doubt. The Sense of Smell Institute has data to back it up. They report that people can remember a fragrance 65% of the time after a year. When it comes to visuals, however, recall dropped to 50%…and that was after just three months!

The question is: how do you leverage the connections between scent, memory, and emotion to set your business up for success?

Westin and Nike, which have leaned heavily into scent marketing, have seen positive results. For companies large and small, the benefits of a signature scent are myriad: brands that adopt them usually find that they draw in more customers, and that the customers stay longer. More time in the store tends to mean they spend more money, as well. Let’s look at some details:

• Scent & Memory – How powerful is the connection? Consider: People can remember just 5% of what they’ve seen, but 7 times that (35%) of what they’ve smelled!
• Scent & Staying Power – Studies show that customers browse longer and shop around more when they’re in an aromatic space, as opposed to a sterile one. For one casino, revenue increased by 45%! [SOURCE]
• Scent & Emotion – Aromas often catalyze emotional responses. With the right signature scent, your business has the opportunity to help customers feel welcome, comfortable, and happy as soon as they “smell” you.

Don’t just take our word for it. As you consider what your brand’s signature scent might be, explore scent marketing in action in various business sectors.

Understanding your brand is crucial to choosing your signature scent. Before you delve into the amazing array of scents available, make sure you’ve defined yours with a cohesive brand identity statement. Nailing down your “why,” defining brand personality, settling on tone of voice, and choosing a color palette can all help point you in the right direction.

As part of the process, you’ll want to consider what scents are successful for other businesses in your industry. Scent marketing in gyms is different from olfactory branding in offices. The amount of space that must be covered differs. The physical spaces—and the types of customers you serve—will affect your choices.

Next is the hard part: translating that brand identity into a signature scent, all while bearing your customers and your business’s physical space in mind. If that sounds daunting, it is—especially as you browse all the scent options. That’s where a scent branding strategist like Aire-Master can really help.

Once you’ve found a fragrance that you think fits, gather feedback. Ask your high-level decision-making team, AND the customer-facing folks on the floor, the ones who represent your brand every day. Because part of what you want is for your signature scent to benefit employee health and wellness, too!

Once you’ve chosen your signature scent, where and how should you deploy it? Since it’s tied directly to the brand and business, it makes sense to use it where it will be most powerful. You may wish to use it in some areas (store, lobby, boardroom), but not others (bathrooms).

This kind of scent zoning helps keep your signature scent free of unpleasant smells that might dilute its power. Learn more from our hints for scenting your office.