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Companies are using ‘signature
smells’ in a bid to win customers, writes Charmaine Chan.
Simon Faure-Field talks brands. He
tosses into conversation such terms as “brand extension”, “brand
values”, “brand positioning”, “brand standards” and “brand-aligned
experiences”.
A nose for profit led the
Singapore-based, British-born businessman initially to provide
music and voice-recorded messages for clients wanting a
“consistent” image. That led to music styling and, since2005 the
related field of scent branding.
So convinced is he of gaining
customer loyalty by aural olfactory means that he plans to open a
sensory-brand consultancy this month in Hong Kong his second after one in the Lion City. “We’re the only business
in Asia that provides music and fragrance to businesses based upon
scientific research and in a branding context,” he says.
Once was a time when branding meant
searing a mark onto the rump of cattle. Then came trademarks, then
jingles, mascots and slogans. With manufacturers recognizing how
consumers formed bonds with their products the practice turned
quickly into shaping personality and building identity. What
formerly revolved around backside burns thus came to shape the
bottom lines of business.
This is where Faure-Field, 38,
hopes to prove the power of, for one thing, our sense of smell.
Hotels, supermarkets and even airports have started in recent
years experimenting with fragrances, hoping to trigger emotions
and affect customer behaviour.
A leader in the hospitality
industry was Westin Hotels & Resorts, whose custom-designed
white-tea scent was so well-received the fragrance soon became
part of its retail line. “They were doing quite well globally but
they had an identity crisis because guests couldn’t remember why
they chose Westin,” says Faure-Field, whose company, Equal
Strategy, works with Westin and its parent company Starwood Hotels
& Resorts. An emotional connection was needed, “and they wanted to
achieve that through a multi-sensory approach to their brand”, he
says.
The relationship between smells and
emotions is well known, as is the ability of certain aromas to
boost consumption. Avery Gilbert, author of What the Nose Knows:
The Science of Scent in Everyday Life, says: “Scents can speak of
brand attributes like ‘luxury’ or ‘masculine’ and they can
reinforce a message like ‘safe, nurturing and caring’. Because it
is so richly evocative, scent is an excellent way to reinforce
brand awareness and thereby build consumer loyalty.”
It can also induce impulse buying,
which is why supermarkets may position fans near their bakeries or
infuse the air in the fruit section with the scent of green
apples. ”So many products are vacuum-sealed or frozen that
supermarket shopping can be an exercise in smell deprivation,”
says Gilbert. Some coffee shops now pull customers not with the
real thing but with a facsimile scent.
Plucking “coffee” from a sleek
briefcase full of small glass bottles, Faure-Field says. “ When
people smell this it creates a craving.” He cites the case of BP,
which apparently quadrupled sales of coffee at its petrol stations
by spritzing the interiors with freshly brewed scent.
That sensory branding can lift
sales has won Equal Strategy clients not just in Asia but also in
the Middle East and North America. Rather than imprinting an
olfactory stamp, two hotels, Raffles Dubai and Pan Pacific in
Seattle, had the company style their music to create different
moods in different public spaces. ”When I embark on a music
project with a client, it isn’t “Tell me what music you want and
I’ll give it to you,’” says Faure-Field. “It’s ”Tell me about the
hotel, about the customers, about your brand and how you want
people to behave and what sort of mood you want.’”
With the information he needs.
Faure-Field then creates a palette of music from a library of five
million tracks. For the Naumi a boutique hotel in Singapore, he
mixed chill-out, down-tempo playlists with a ginger and lime scent
created from a collection of more than 3,500 fragrances.
“I worked with the owner before it
was on the drawing board,” says Faure-Field. “When i saw the
glass, chrome, very minimal, very uncluttered design I knew it had
to be clean and fresh with an Asian dimension. This wasn’t going
to be a family hotel. This was going to be for the 25 to mid-40s
travelling businessman who wants personalized service.”
Faure-Field’s enthusiasm for his
product is as heady as the Shangri-La fragrance that is part of
his collection. A sometime DJ and an interior designer by
training, he moved from Britain to Singapore in 1995 to work for a
company providing telephone messaging. In 1998 he branched out on
his own.
“Generally when you phoned a
number, what you heard when you were put on hold wasn’t as
impressive as the actual advertisement that made you call,” he
says. “That didn’t make sense, so we started helping people get
the right sort of music on the phone system and interlaced
messages. If everything was in a branded context, then callers’
time on hold would be more engaging and this would reduce the
number of people abandoning the call or calling someone else.”
Sending the right message persuaded
a Singapore branch of DBS Bank to approach Faure-Field for an
“environmental branding solution” that concentrated on music and
scent. Shanghai Tang customer may swoon at its use of ginger lily,
a distinctive scent that also wafts through Club Feather Boa, but
some may wonder how appropriate it is for a bank to perfume its
branches, in case of DBS, with ginger flower.
Gilbert has no problem with the
concept. “A bank scent might communicate starchy formality and
security, or it might try to reinforce a friendly and relaxed
atmosphere,” he says, adding that banks could also consider
impregnating their ATM cards with perfume. “Voila-a logo-scent
that ties together every facet of a bank’s brand,” he says.
While the ginger lily at Feather
Boa “goes well with their most popular sweet drink, daiquiri”,
according to in-house designer Vivien Fung there’s always the
danger of over-egging the pudding.
In the sensitive world of scent
that means introducing something that attracts attention to itself
rather than to the products and services, says Gilbert. Then there
are problems, say, with introducing low-arousal scents in an area
that needs the opposite. Combinations, however, can produce the
desired effect, according to Faure-Field, who whips out a
vanilla/grapefruit vial for effect. The stimulating high-arousal
citrus scent counters the calming qualities of vanilla, he says.
But the soothing effect of vanilla
fragrance is not the only reason it is popular. Fung says of The
Candle Company’s most popular scent, French vanilla. “It’s a
nostalgic scent associated with childhood memories because it is
used in the first foods we tasted, like baby formula, puddings and
ice cream.”
The “safest” perfumes, however, are
those “a consumer naturally associates with the imagery of the
retail brand”, says Gilbert, citing feminine scents for boutiques,
masculine ones for auto-parts shops or “abstract” smells for
electronics stores. “It’s not so much about ingredients-it’s about
how the consumer interprets the scent and whether it makes “sense”
in a given commercial environment,” he says.
Once an appropriate scent has been
chosen to help brand a business it is probably wise to stick to
it. The same applies to humans. Consistency is key. Faure-Field
stresses, which is why he wears only Bulgari Soir cologne. “I am
my own brand,” he says.
Of course,
the luxury Italian company might argue otherwise.
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