Olfactory Marketing Gone Wild

Fri, Dec 19, 2008

I applaud companies that employ a signature aroma in their retail locations that is distinctive and immediately evocative of the product or service. In the fast food arena, Burger King’s use of flame broiling puts its olfactory marketing a step ahead of its competitors, who mostly use conventional frying equipment.

Now, Burger King breaks new olfactory marketing ground with Eau de Whopper:

The WHOPPER Sandwich is America’s Favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and brings it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.

Apologies to Neuromarketing readers for furthering this obvious viral marketing ploy, but this is just too goofy to resist mentioning. More info in case you know someone whose personal aroma might be improved with a hint of charred beef: Fire Meets Desire.

Roger Dooley (author of 630 posts on Neuromarketing.)

Roger Dooley writes and speaks about marketing, and in particular the use of neuroscience and behavioral research to make advertising, marketing, and products better. He is the primary author at Neuromarketing, and founder of Dooley Direct LLC, a marketing consultancy. Follow him on Twitter.

2 Responses to “Olfactory Marketing Gone Wild”

Samuel Bradley Says:
December 20th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Can you imagine the power of mediated scent? Apparently someone can, as I see an AdSense ad to my right talking about it.

Smell is incredibly powerful, as it is the only major scent to directly reach the isocortex without being gated by the thalamus. This ungated access makes smell especially powerful, whether that was by design or evolutionary slop.

The flame broiled smell of the Whopper is powerful when you are in Burger King, but I am not so interested in capturing it in an aerosol can.

But if you could smell it when a banner ad came up … revolutionary.