Making Sense of Scents

Where to begin? Well, let me tell you my inspiration. There is a small restaurant, to use the term loosely, in my building at work. I was coming in this morning, and the smell was pretty good. It reminded me of pancakes with butter, maple syrup and bacon, or perhaps little maple flavored sausages. It smelled wonderful. I generally don’t eat the above mentioned foods very often either, but boy, it did smell good. I got to my desk and made a cup of red tea. It would have to suffice. As I was sipping my tea looking for ideas for a blog article I thought “smells and how they tantalize and tempt us”. So, thus begins this week’s blog.

There is so much information out about smells and eating. I think the best information so far has been from food marketing sites on the web. I found some published medical journal articles as well. I am pretty convinced that the marketing companies figured out what scientists and medical professionals are trying to explain. That is, scents sell. Makes sense, sorry, couldn’t resist. There are so many articles on the smart marketing of Cinnabon. Who can resist the smell on cinnamon wafting through the mall or the airport? Well, I can. I love the smell, and am probably the only person on the planet who doesn’t have to stop and buy one, just in case you are curious, I don’t like the frosting, I prefer them plain and luckily for me, I have never timed it when they have just come out of the oven waiting to be frosted. So now you know.

Some Olfactory Information
· Cinnabon – heavenly cinnamon smell may be synthetic in some places-are they really baking the buns in the mall or airport?
· Kentucky Fried Chicken – may be using existing smells or synthetic smells to enhance what is there.
· Exxon On The Run – fresh brewed coffee scent is piped in to the brewing kiosks.
· A small family run chain on the East Coast keeps oven running so customers smell baked goods. They roast almonds and have a fan blowing the aroma throughout the store.
· Realtors will recommend baking cookies, using cinnamon or coffee before prospective buyers come to look at your home.
· Rolls Royce had the scent of their popular (among those with BIG checking accounts) 1965 Silver Cloud car reproduced and sprays it under the seats to recreate that “Roller” smell. Among those of you reading this, have any of you experienced the Rolls Royce, in any way, shape or form? Just curious.
· Samsung is working on a seductive aroma to enhance technological sales.
· A Dutch company reproduced the scent of fresh cut grass for tennis balls.

As you can see, scent marketing has lots of opportunity to lure us into purchasing products without thinking about it (except for purchasing a Rolls Royce).

Does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode when George worked for the Yankees and Steinbrenner ordered him to pick up a calzone? You can read it all here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Calzone Steinbrenner smells the calzone aroma wafting through the vents and thinks George is holding out on him (that’s the short version, it was pretty funny and being from The Big Apple, I could taste the calzone).

I learned that there are cultural biases that one must be aware of, at least if you are marketing scents for a living. I was suddenly reminded of an encounter in grade school when a classmate had eaten a garlic and onion sandwich for lunch, you know, grade schoolers don’t hold their comments, needless to say, she was standing at the back of the line when we had to line up. Peeyew. For a tribe in Mali (West Africa) fried onions rubbed on the body is used as a perfume. Move over Chanel No. 5!

What one person finds delightful someone else may not. I love the smell of a fresh peeled orange. I was walking with my step-sister one day and peeled an orange and shoved it under her nose to smell it and she screamed, she doesn’t like that smell at all. She will eat an orange though. The smell of cooked shrimp makes me gag.

“In my search for answers, I spoke to Lucy Adler, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Ungerer & Company, a global fragrance and flavor house, who shed some light on my question. “We feel certain emotions when we smell something, because that particular scent is connected to a memory, for example, our first love or a wonderful vacation”, Adler explains. “This does not happen consciously. Our scent receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, a part of the brain that is considered the home of deep-seated emotions.” This means, you feel an emotional reaction that you’re not even fully aware of, when you pick up a certain scent. Of course we are able to consciously recognize a lot of scents and are able to name them, but this happens way after they have evoked an emotional reaction. What makes a scent experience so fascinating, says Adler is that your emotional reaction to a scent is a combination of the universal, cultural and personal, drawing from both our own vast personal memory bank and a physiologically predictable mechanism.”
From http://67.227.131.98/2009/03/31/scents-and-beauty---a-cultural-perspective

More olfactory information
· Aromatherapy uses plant oils to promote physical and psychological well being.
· Anosmia is the loss of one’s sense of smell.
· Phantosmia is an olfactory hallucination
· Famous movie line - “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Kilgore (Robert Duvall-Apocalypse Now).

As I write this, I am seeing grass getting a little green, (not covered by spring snow). Time to think about planting flowers, the deer will thank you. Go take a walk and enjoy the fresh smells of flowers and fresh spring air and avoid the pitfalls of piped in aromas of foods that tempt and corrupt us.