Scent Marketing Examples - 5 Famous Examples of Scent Marketing

1. The Apple Mac scent

We start with a mysterious case. Apple products smell wonderfully new when they come out of the box. This is similar to the scent of a brand new car at the dealership. That scent seems to be a combination of the high-quality materials of the product, the ink, and the cardboard of the box. Together, this creates a unique experience when unpacking a new MacBook or iPhone.

Strangely enough, the iPhone recently had the same scent as a MacBook or iPad, while the iPhone is made of plastic and the MacBook and iPad are made of aluminum. It seems that an artificial scent has been added secretly. Apple will never admit this, but there are rumors that a former employee spilled the beans to a journalist. It appears that Apple artificially adds scent to the packaging so that all customers get the familiar luxury Apple feeling every time. This clearly utilizes the rule of thumb: scent is recognition and thus customer loyalty.

hotel_large.jpg?v=1596394260" alt="Examples of scent marketing - rose scent in scent marketing">

2. The scent of Holiday Inn

When you are far from home and sleeping in a hotel, there is nothing better than entering with a delightful scent. Holiday Inn uses scent experiences to make visitors feel welcome. They spread a rose scent that you often smell at weddings, and the hotel chain also spreads the scent of leather in business meeting rooms. The scent of leather gives a feeling of warmth and luxury. Together with the right music, the hotel ensures that guests are happy to sit in the lobby or bar and feel more at ease, or to hold a productive meeting together, of course.

Holiday Inn cleverly uses scent marketing. Different aromas, perfectly suited to the space in which they are spread.

3. M&M’s actually smell like nothing

Have you ever been to the M&M's World Store in London? This store smells like delicious chocolate. This seems logical with all that chocolate in the store, but it is not. All M&M’s are completely pre-packaged in airtight packaging. It is the air system in the store that spreads a nice chocolate scent! They use scent machines in the ventilation system. This makes customers crave chocolate, leading them to take bags full of M&M’s home. When they open the packaging at home, the delightful chocolate aroma brings them back to the World Store for a moment.

4. Freshly baked bread in the supermarket

The scent of freshly baked bread. Who doesn't get hungry from that? It reminds you of a scent from the past. No matter which supermarket you walk into these days: there is a scent of freshly baked bread. And there is a very good reason for that. The feeling of hunger makes us spend significantly more.

Most breads are baked in large bakeries, not in the supermarket. They are then brought to the supermarket and baked a little more so that the scent spreads throughout the supermarket. Just pay attention, this scent is often strongest at the entrance. The effect is that you end up picking up something tasty (at the bakery section), even if it wasn't on your shopping list.

5. Dunkin’ Donuts combines scent with radio commercial

Dunkin’ Donuts had a radio campaign on public buses in Korea, but it was a very special one. Scent machines built into the bus recognized the sound of the commercial and released the scent of fresh coffee to the bus passengers, exactly at the moment when the sultry radio voice of Dunkin’ Donuts told them that there was a Dunkin’ Donuts right next to their bus stop where they could get such delicious coffee. Try saying no to that. No one could. The result was a very effective marketing campaign that attracted 16% more visitors to the locations on the bus routes and resulted in a 29% growth in coffee sales at those locations.

Want to know more about scent marketing?

It's always nice to learn something new, and we hope that this was the case with these examples of scent marketing. Want to read more about scent marketing? Click here.