Three Steps to Your Smell of Success

There was a very valid reason why Starbucks took their breakfast sandwiches off the menu for more than six months. Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz felt that the smell of the cooked food conflicted with the scent of the coffee for which Starbucks is so well known.

Starbucks’ aroma task force—yep, there is an actual department for this—took the clash of aromas very seriously. And they are not the only ones. Using scent as a marketing tool, Cinnabon negotiates the leases for their stores based on the best reach of their cinnamon-roll smell, which we have to admit lures us in. Abercrombie & Fitch and many other retailers are very cautious about their locations so as to not have their own scents conflict with any others.

The Wall Street Journal recently dedicated a whole article to this tactic, and you bet that as a smart marketing service provider, you can add your own aroma to your client’s success as well. As a matter of fact, print is uniquely qualified for this.

1. Choose a scent
Bread, cinnamon, sun tan lotion, chocolate—these are the easy ones, but there are literally thousands of stock fragrances available to entice potential customers. You may apply as many fragrances as you like to your printed piece, but keep the aroma task force in mind and be mindful not to have any clashing smells.

2. Put the scent on paper
Getting the scent onto the paper can be as easy as adding a fifth color to the print job. Or you can embed the scent directly into your ink, apply a scented varnish, scented coatings, scratch and sniff, Rub'nSmell, Lift'nsmell...The options are plentiful and the uses range from scented direct mail pieces to catalogs to labels...

3. Enjoy the smell of success
Scented pieces can be clearly identified—dare I say sniffed—among the rest of the recipient’s mail. They can be rubbed many times with scent released each time; the actual number of rubbings is determined by the size of the printed area and the intensity of the rubbing.