When you’re trying to attract customers, have you ever thought about using a certain smell? Walking into a store or hotel lobby, you might get a whiff of some invisible marketing magic. It’s called scent marketing, and here’s why the battle for your nose has become so fierce.
Ever since walking into a tattoo shop as a teenager and smelling incense sticks lightly wafting a mystical, cozy and comforting aroma around, I have used them at home.
When Dallas Pratt worked at an outpost of Aesop in an outdoor shopping mall outside Chicago, one of her and her co-workers’ favorite ways of drawing in new customers was making a concoction they called “sidewalk tea”. They would put a few drops of scented lotion in a cup of hot water, and then they would pour...
When I visited the Tin Building, a sprawling, upscale food hall in New York's Seaport District, restaurant critic Pete Wells's New York Times review was on my mind. Wells was largely complimentary, but, he said, something was missing. While the European markets that served as inspiration are packed with smells, the squeaky-clean Tin Building had no scent.
