Aroma Design

November 2019

The holy grail of brand aroma design is a scent so iconic and instantly recognisable that it activates not just consumers’ memories about a brand but the way that they feel about it too. No conscious effort. No need for language.

Consider for a moment the power of that.

Designing a brand aroma capable of doing all this is a delicate balancing act. While it may sound like a dark and mysterious art, I will outline an approach that is firmly rooted in cutting-edge scientific research into the effects of multisensory cues on human memory, attention and emotion.

I feel, therefore I am

The feeling of a sudden rush of recollection and emotion felt when encountering certain smells from our past is what neuroscientist Antonio Damasio calls a ‘somatic marker’.

The function of somatic markers is to facilitate efficient decision-making by drawing on memories and their associated emotions. Instead of slowly and rationally thinking our way through decisions, somatic markers allow us to instinctively feel what is right based on what we have experienced before.

Many people choose the same brand of sun cream year-on-year because its smell has become inextricably linked with happy memories of fun in the sun. Stood at the store shelf considering a bewildering array of options, these emotionally charged memories guide purchase behaviour and can drive fierce loyalty.

This is what Damasio meant when he said:

“We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.”

We are primarily emotional creatures that just so happen to also be capable of rational thought.

We begin to amass somatic markers from early childhood and continue adding new ones throughout our lives. Some are highly specific and unique to the individual – the smell of cherry Carmex reminds me strongly of the period of time just after I passed my driving test.

However, because we encounter many of the same experiences as our fellow humans as we move through life, we all share a collective pool of scent-triggered somatic markers that we can call upon as aroma designers.

Cut grass calls forth memories of summer, associations with freshness and a feeling of happiness; baby powder evokes childhood, softness and comfort; leather conjures impressions of quality, craftsmanship and feelings of pleasure.

These associations are the building blocks of a brand aroma. They grant us privileged access to a wealth of stored experience and emotion in consumers’ minds that can be used to subconsciously prime the values of a brand.

Is it just me or does it smell like heritage in here?

It is clearly possible to communicate product attributes via aroma; for food and beverages you can simply use the scent of the product itself – the ‘Subway Method’ if you will.

But it’s also possible—and highly desirable—to communicate abstract emotional brand values for all types of product.

By taking brands’ unique values into account when choosing which ingredients to use when constructing brand aromas this makes it possible to distinguish your brand from others in the same product category.

For example, for a mellow and traditional beer brand wishing to express their values of authenticity and craft, we might use inviting aromas such as wood or malt to evoke feelings of warmth.

On the other hand, for a more youthful and edgy beer brand we might use bright, effervescent and stimulating aromas such as lemongrass to communicate energy, excitement and vibrancy.

Often, there may be friction between product attributes and brand attributes. Take for example the case of tea. At a product level, a tea should be refreshing and uplifting – crossmodally ‘fast’ properties. However, at a brand level, most manufacturers wish to connote relatively ‘slow’ qualities of emotional warmth, indulgence and relaxation.

How do we resolve these conflicts?

A simple approach entails using different aromas at different touchpoints e.g. a warm aroma communicating brand attributes at the point of sale and a fresh aroma at the point of consumption. 

A more sophisticated approach is to develop a fully-layered aroma with top, middle and base notes. This gives us the opportunity to use these three levels to communicate different qualities. An aroma might contain bright citrus top notes evoking refreshment that over time give way to woody base notes that denote emotional warmth.

Taking this layered approach, it is possible to dial up certain ingredients and flex the aroma to communicate certain attributes more strongly and serve different functions at different touchpoints while still staying true to the main brand aroma.

Iconic status: a sense of responsibility

If a brand aroma is designed well enough (and of course the product itself is good enough to match), people will develop a distinct somatic marker for your brand aroma in its own right – the promised land of scent marketing.

Brands that have achieved this—Abercrombie & Fitch, Cinnabon and Play-Doh to name but a few—keep the recipes for their magical essences tightly guarded under lock and key. At this point, alterations to the formulation are perilous and should be avoided at all costs.

Would Play-Doh ever be the same if they changed the smell?

When Johnson & Johnson changed the formula of their baby powder, the alteration of its iconic scent provoked a backlash from consumers who felt that a precious olfactory link to their past had been irreversibly severed. Sales dropped.

Smell the way you look, sound the way you smell

A brand aroma should never be conceived in isolation.

It is vitally important to consider aroma within the context of a wider holistic sensory brand strategy – a brand should smell the way it looks and sound the way it smells. Both the overall blended composition and its individual constituent ingredients should sing in harmony with all other sensory elements from sight and sound to taste and touch.

When all sensory cues work together to communicate the same brand and product attributes, we see a ‘superadditive’ effect where the overall effect is greater than the sum of its parts.

When you achieve this congruence across your brand’s sensory touchpoints it makes what could potentially be a large and unwieldy amount of information into a streamlined package that is effortless for your customers to interpret, understand and act upon.

To use the scientific terms, crossmodal design leads to increased perceptual fluency. Study after study shows that easy-to-perceive stimuli (and this includes brands) induce the experience of pleasure and are judged more positively.

This is the power of multisensory design.