Scent Marketing: Sending Smells by Phone

(Jose Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950)

Does smell sell?

After researching Scent Marketing: Leading Consumers By The Nose, I became convinced that scent marketing is a viable (and pleasant) means of making consumers more comfortable to buy.

Hotels, airlines, electronic stores, and others, have used scent to sell. Recently, the Tampa Bay Rays became the first Major League Baseball team to scent their stadium, adding an “orange” aroma Citrus Burst to their Tropicana Field ballbark. (It didn’t work in the 2008 World Series against the Phillies, who prefer the smell of Philly cheesesteaks.)

Real estate agents have long known about the power of pleasant homey aromas on prospective home buyers. Baked cookies and bread feature in many a Open House. But beyond having a nice smelling office, agent and car, how far can this scent marketing travel?

Smell My House

Well, how about sending a prospective buyer a video email of a home and when the kitchen comes into view, the scent of warm cookies wafts through the air? And as the camera pans the rose garden, the sweet aroma of a Mr. Lincoln bouquet fills the room.

NTT Communications is working to apply technology to fragrance delivery, where audiovisual content can be paired with specific scents and sent by cell phone. Nokia is also working on a Scentsory cell phone.

As people appreciate and associate value with sensory information, NTT Communications smells fragrance as the next important step for telecommunications. In a company sponsored online survey, NTT found that 56 percent of people polled use aromatherapy or believe that it has positive benefits.

Here Comes The Smell Phone

The new smartphones will smell, but in a good way.

NTT wants to include aromas into its communications services and has been testing internet-controlled fragrance dispensers. Their “Mobile Fragrance Communication service” will allow users to send scents through their cell phones. Using NTT’s DoCoMo’s “i-mode” mobile web site, senders can even create custom fragrance “smellists” and match scents with visual and audio content.

For the smell to reach the nose of choice, recipients will require a fragrance-dispensing unit which contains 16 different base fragrances, which callers can mix and send– sorta like a smell cocktail. It will also be possible to send scents by email to the recipient’s internet connection, which will then send the instructions to the in-home phone unit. If all goes well, NTT intends to price the fragrance emitter at around $195. If NTT can deliver, they may enjoy the sweet smell of money.

Hey, maybe one Valentine’s Day you can call in your bouquet of roses and box of chocolates.

Sources and Other Smelly Links:

“Smell” billboard in SF bus shelter (the mix of bus fumes and milk did not make for an appetizing ad or maybe it was the lactose intolerant)