The most evocative sense that we have is smell. Remember the smell of your childhood, your mother’s home cooking, perhaps her scent, that has an emotional bind beyond the sense of sight or hearing.

That emotional bond is the captivation of brand, where customer & product/service = brand, the & being the magic. It’s why people love certain brands; there is little logic but an amazing attachment. Andrew has already eluded to this in the blog on Lovemarks the brainchild of Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi CEO.

Why when people sell a house do they put vanilla pods on the radiators to give the potential buyers a sense of homeliness or have real coffee percolating at the same time? There was a time when Estate Agents in London had these things in their pockets to encourage sales.

So now I have read recently that the smartest corporates out there are investigating the sense of smell with branding. What does that mean? Well, if you’re passing by a retailer and smell something deeply evocative and cannot help but buy then you know that the ultimate brand sensory technique has got you.

Apparently when men’s clothes have been diffused with smell of rose maroc then the sales have doubled. De Beers, the diamond dealers, selling the hardest mineral in the world have scented their showrooms with the smell of flowers, citrus and green tea.

Sony is developing the idea in not only their retail stores and carrier bags but also to impregnating the hard plastics used in their gadgets with fragrance.

What next? The smell of brand new laptops or leather car seats from a bag of Walkers crisps.