Differentiating your brand's marketing
I'm fascinated by how different stimuli affect people, and how they can be used to excite emotions in your brand's marketing. Optical illusions, logos that hide emotive signals, that sort of thing. I use all this research to inspire identities, see Grey Matter Coffee Roasters for an example.
But scent branding is a new avenue worth exploring.
Brand strategists are looking for ways to differentiate the brands they work with. Whether that's by affecting customer emotions or influencing their behaviours without intruding. We're used to taglines, logos, identity systems, Canva templates. Yadda yadda. We get bombarded by visual messages. They blend together, creating a stream of ordinary. That's why discovering a new way to excite people makes a real difference.
Let's frame the content of this blog. Sparked by a vivid memory from San Francisco.
In 2008, we flew in from the UK, and my girlfriend had a bucket list of shops to hit. Clothes shop Abercrombie and Fitch was at the top. If you've ever been to one – you'll know what I mean – a thick wall of woody, citrusy smell smacks you right in the chops. You can't even see the shop. You might be 100m away.
Anyway, my wife sniffs it out like an Eastern Brown snake sniffs out a baby possum. Dragging me excitedly towards it. A topless, very tanned man, with muscles in places I didn't know you could have muscles, greets you! The shops were somehow dark and moody, yet they were still brightly lit.
Racks of pristine, high-quality clothes and that smell, it's intoxicating. Music is pumping, but yet it's not intrusive. You linger, find jeans, t-shirts and jumpers, and wait for a changing room to try it out. I came out to find my girlfriend with a clothes stack bigger than Everest. All I could see were two eyes peering over the top and a smile that lit up that dark shop.
The science behind scent branding
Smell is the only sense with a direct line to the emotional centre of your brain.
Every other sense, sight, sound, touch, taste, gets processed through the thalamus first. A kind of neurological switchboard that filters and routes information. Smell bypasses it entirely. Odours travel directly from your olfactory receptors to the amygdala and hippocampus, the parts of your brain responsible for emotion and memory. That's why a smell can drop you into a vivid memory in a fraction of a second, before you've even consciously registered what you're smelling.
The implications for brand experience are significant. According to the Sense of Smell Institute, people can recall scents with 65% accuracy after a year. Visual recall drops to around 50% after just three months. Your logo, your colours, your carefully chosen typeface - all of them are less memorable than a well-chosen fragrance.
Research from Northumbria University found that appropriately scented environments increased task performance by 15% and reduced stress markers by up to 30%. A separate study found that scented retail environments increased customer dwell time by up to 40% and lifted sales between 11% and 25% compared to unscented control environments.
The mechanism is straightforward. Pleasant scents improve mood. Better moods lower resistance and increase openness. Customers linger longer, engage more, and spend more. But beyond the transactional benefit, scent creates the kind of neurological imprint that visual branding simply cannot replicate.
The business case for scent branding
The research is compelling. But real-world results are more convincing.
A German DIY retailer introduced the scent of fresh cut grass throughout their stores. Customer satisfaction scores rose by almost 50%. Shoppers also rated staff as more competent and motivated, despite nothing about the staff actually changing. The scent did that.
A kitchen appliance store diffused the smell of freshly baked apple pie. Sales increased by 33%. Not because the products changed. Not because the prices dropped. Because customers felt something they associated with warmth, home and comfort, and that feeling transferred directly to the products in front of them.
Nike found that adding scent to their retail environments increased purchase intent by 80%. Abercrombie and Fitch built an entire brand identity around a single fragrance, Fierce, diffused so aggressively outside their stores that you could smell them from the street before you could see them. That's not accidental. That's a deliberate brand decision that shaped how an entire generation of shoppers felt walking through the door.
I walk past a popular sandwich place on my way to the local shops every week. You find them globally, near where people buy other food.
Your senses get attacked.
That bready, herby, sickly smell is thrust right into your nose, into your olfactory system. Your brain goes beep, boop, and tells you what awaits. Soft pillowy bread, maybe meatballs, salads, cheese, jalapenos and the question, "Do you want that toasted?"
I don't even need to tell you the name of the sandwich place. The smell connects you right to their advertising.
That's scent branding working at street level. No visual. No sound. Just a smell doing the entire job of brand recognition before you've even decided you're hungry.
Westin Hotels developed their White Tea signature scent, a blend of white tea, vanilla and cedarwood, and rolled it out across every property globally. Guests don't just remember the bed or the service. They remember how the lobby smelled. And that memory travels home with them, embedded in a bath product or a candle from the gift shop.
Singapore Airlines went further. They created a patented fragrance called Stefan Floridian Waters, worn by cabin crew and diffused through hot towels before takeoff. Every sensory touchpoint aligned with a single emotional intention: calm, luxury, care.
These are large brands with large budgets. But the principle scales down to any business with a physical space and a clear sense of what their customers should feel.
How your brand can use scent branding: real examples
The following examples aren't hypothetical. They're drawn from real businesses, real spaces, and real results. None of them required a significant budget. All of them required a clear understanding of what their customers were feeling when they walked in the door.
Psychologists and therapists: using scent to reduce anxiety before the session begins
Anxiety walks in before the client does. Anyone running a therapy practice, counselling service or psychology clinic knows that the waiting room is doing emotional work before a single word is spoken. The environment either amplifies the anxiety or begins to dissolve it.
A simple diffusion of lavender, basil, cinnamon or citrus can shift the nervous system before the session begins. Not as a gimmick. As a deliberate extension of the therapeutic intention.
The lime tree: how one parent coach used citrus to settle nerves and build brand recall
One of the most effective examples of scent branding we've encountered didn't involve a diffuser, a fragrance consultant or a brand guidelines document.
A parent coach we worked with ran sessions for stressed, overwhelmed parents. She understood exactly what state her clients arrived in, and she designed her entire intake experience around shifting that state before the session began.
She asked each parent to walk to her lime tree, pick a lime, scratch the skin and inhale. Combined with a cup of herbal tea prepared while they settled in, this simple ritual reliably brought people's nervous systems down before the real work began. The lime became part of her brand. Parents talked about it. They remembered it. Some of them told us the smell of lime still reminds them of feeling supported.
That's scent branding. No budget. No agency. Just a deep understanding of the customer's emotional state and a deliberate decision to meet them there.
Gyms and offices: using scent to prime energy, focus and performance
Energy and focus are the twin needs of any gym or open plan office. Peppermint, thyme and rosemary are all associated with increased alertness and improved performance. The Northumbria University research cited earlier found that peppermint specifically shaved seconds off athletic performance times and added measurable cardiovascular benefit.
A gym that smells clean and energising removes a significant psychological barrier, the association of gyms with sweat and effort, and replaces it with something that primes the body for performance before a single rep is done.
In an open plan office, subtle diffusion of citrus or mint in collaborative spaces and lavender or sandalwood in quieter zones can shift the ambient mood of an entire team without anyone consciously noticing why they feel more focused.
Travel agents and breweries: using scent to trigger memories and increase sales
A travel agent's job is to sell a feeling before a destination. Charcoal, pine, coconut and tropical notes tap directly into holiday memories, the smell of a barbecue on a beach, a pine forest on a mountain walk, a poolside bar at dusk. These aren't random choices. They're emotional shortcuts to the state your customer wants to be in when they're deciding to book.
A brewery faces a different challenge. The smell of charcoal increases hunger. Hunger increases thirst. Thirst drives drink sales. Tropical and pine notes are prominent in many craft beer aromas and can prime a customer's palate before they've even looked at the tap list.
Bookshops and libraries: using scent to increase linger time and drive purchases
Linger time is the metric that matters most for a bookshop. The longer someone stays, the more they buy. Coffee and cocoa evoke warmth and comfort, the emotional state of a person who is in no hurry to leave. Woody, slightly damp notes echo the smell of old books, triggering the particular nostalgia that draws people to physical bookshops in the first place rather than ordering online.
An on-site coffee offering does double duty here. It creates the scent and the reason to stay.
Challenges when using scents
Scents should complement your brand values, audience and context. That alignment matters more than the scent itself. A calming lavender diffuser in a high-intensity gym sends a contradictory signal. A heavy, musky fragrance in a children's clothing store feels wrong before anyone can articulate why. The scent has to fit the emotional world your brand is already building.
Sensitivity is also worth considering. Some people with allergies or fragrance sensitivities will find strong scents uncomfortable or even distressing. This isn't a reason to avoid scent branding, it's a reason to keep your choice simple and your intensity low. A subtle, clean scent that most people won't consciously register is almost always more effective than something assertive anyway.
Scent branding can operate at two very different levels. At its most subtle, it's an ambient background note that shifts the feeling of a space without anyone identifying it. At its most aggressive, it's Abercrombie and Fitch pushing fragrance out through the doors and onto the street, making themselves impossible to ignore from 100 metres away. Both are legitimate strategies. The right level depends entirely on your brand, your audience and what you want them to feel.
How to get started with scent branding
The good news is you don't need a fragrance consultant or a significant budget to test this. Most businesses can start with an oil diffuser and a few essential oils, and refine from there.
Start with your customer's emotional state, not a scent catalogue. Ask yourself one question before you choose anything: what do I want my customer to feel the moment they walk in? Calm. Energised. Nostalgic. Excited. Luxurious. The answer to that question leads you to the right scent family far more reliably than browsing fragrance options and guessing.
Then work through these steps:
Define the feeling first. Write down the single emotional state you want to create. Not a list. One emotion. That clarity will guide every decision that follows.
Research scents that trigger that emotion. Lavender, basil and citrus for calm. Peppermint, rosemary and thyme for energy. Vanilla, cinnamon and sandalwood for warmth and comfort. Coconut, pine and charcoal for adventure and appetite.
Test with your team before your customers. Buy two or three essential oils and run a diffuser during a normal working day. Ask staff how the space feels. Adjust the intensity. Find the level where it's present but not intrusive.
Start subtle. The most effective scent branding is the kind people can't consciously identify. If someone walks in and thinks "it smells nice in here" you're winning. If they walk in and immediately identify the scent, it's probably too strong.
Update your brand guidelines. Once you've landed on a signature scent, document it. The oil brand, the blend ratio, the diffuser settings, the times of day it runs. Treat it the same way you'd treat your colour palette or your typeface. It's a brand asset now.
Consider every touchpoint. Scent doesn't have to stay in your physical space. A drop of essential oil on tissue paper inside product packaging. A signature candle in a client gift. A spray in your event space. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to reinforce the same emotional association.
If you're not sure where to start, a brand audit will help you identify the emotional gap between how your customers currently feel engaging with your brand and how you want them to feel. That gap is exactly where scent branding can do its most effective work.
How could scent branding work in a brand awareness campaign?
Most brand awareness campaigns live in the visual and auditory world. Billboards, social media, radio, video. They compete for the same limited bandwidth of sight and sound that every other brand is already fighting over.
Scent opens a different channel entirely.
Imagine a climate campaign designed to make people stop and feel the reality of global warming. Not read about it. Not watch a video about it. Feel it. A diffused smoke scent at a public event or installation could trigger a visceral, immediate response that no poster or social ad can replicate. The smell of burning bypasses rational thought and lands directly in the emotional brain. That's the point.
Or consider a tourism campaign for a coastal region. Diffusing salt air and sunscreen at an airport or train station doesn't tell people about the destination. It drops them into the feeling of already being there. That's a fundamentally different kind of persuasion.
Scent in brand awareness campaigns is still rare, which is precisely why it works. When every other brand is fighting for eyes and ears, the brand that reaches people through a sense they weren't expecting to be engaged has already won the first moment of attention.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is scent branding?
Scent branding is the strategic use of fragrance to build emotional associations with your brand at physical touchpoints. It taps into the powerful connection between smell and memory to create more memorable brand experiences. Scent marketing is a broader term often used interchangeably, but scent branding specifically refers to using fragrance as a deliberate brand identity tool, like a logo you can smell.
How does scent branding work?
Scent branding works by introducing specific fragrances at physical touchpoints like retail stores, offices, or events to trigger emotional responses. Because smell is processed in the same part of the brain that handles memory and emotion, a signature scent can significantly boost brand recall and customer loyalty over time.
Which brands use scent branding?
Major brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, Singapore Airlines, Subway, and hotel chains like Westin use signature scents as core parts of their brand experience. But scent branding is not exclusive to large businesses. Any brand with a physical space or customer touchpoint can explore it.
