What’s your favorite smell?

I asked the question on a LinkedIn post, and everyone said something different. I got the ocean, a farm, a forest in the morning after rain. My wife said her mother’s pie, the cinnamon rolls we bake together, and our two-year-old son of all things! Personally, I’m all about food smells. Chocolate chip cookies and pizza first come to mind. It’s clear that these examples are strongly connected with childhood memories.

I got fascinated with this phenomenon when I heard a an awesome podcast interview with Dawn Goldworm, an olfactive expert with more than 20 Years of experience designing scents for luxury brands like Nike, Cadillac, and American Express.

Goldworm says smell is the sense that is the most connected with memory because the nose is so close to your brain. Oder molecules go straight to your limbic system, which supports functions such as emotion, behavior, long-term memory, and olfaction. She says that from shortly before you’re born until ten years old, when you smell something you have a feeling about it.

Nike hired Goldworm to create a fragrance to personify the brand that it could pump into stores and shopping bags. The company wanted to aim their marketing at 17-year-old girls and 19-year-old boys around the world. They wanted a fragrance inspired by the feeling of “about to play a sport.” It took several years to engineer the fragrance, which is a harmony of several different smells they replicated.

They recreated the smells of a soccer cleat in dirt, a basketball as it gets oily from your hand, sneakers skidding on a basketball court, sweat mixing with the rubber on gym equipment, and the smell of opening a box of

Air Force 1 shoes (that model specifically).

The smell of opening a box of new sneakers is definitely one burned into many people’s brains during childhood. It’s created by off-gassing of rubber, glue, cardboard, and plastic on the shoelaces that have been in trapped in a box.

Goldworm no longer works with Nike, but she still amazes clients when she gives them a sample of the company’s fragrance. They smell it and they guess it’s the scent of Nike sneakers.

If you could create a scent for your company, who would be your target audience? What would be the feeling you would want to communicate?

Most of us don’t have the resources to hire an olfactive expert to market our brand, but this podcast reminded me of the importance of pausing for a moment to be mindful of what I want my brand to stand for. What is the identity that we could use in any type of marketing—perhaps marketing that could be connected to all of our senses. I’m sure that touch would be relevant to a lot of manufacturers.

What would you want your customer to think about when they envision your products or you personally?

Accuracy? Beauty? The feeling of good value?

What would that smell and feel like?

Questions:

What is your favorite smell in the world?

What is your least favorite smell?

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