Scent Marketing

Our brains are keenly tuned into scent. An adult can distinguish 10,000 different smells and our bodies generate scent neurons every few weeks to ensure they’re in good working order. Unlike our other senses, scent travels immediately through various parts of your brain instead of being processed centrally first.

The physiology of how we process scent is useful to know because it holds the answers to the psychology of smell, which is where things get really interesting. You’ve probably heard that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. Well, it turns out that’s actually true. When you take a deep whiff of your morning coffee, the smell of those fresh-roasted beans darts into areas of the brain responsible for emotional and memory processing.

Scientists postulate that there are a number of reasons that our bodies treat scent differently than other senses. From hunting and gathering food to finding healthy mates, linking smells with memories that stir up desire, happiness, or even fear is biologically useful for humans.

Humans have one other thing to consider when scent is at play: Context is key. Experiments have shown that while scents are important to our animal brains, our highly visual nature can mingle with and directly influence our reaction to scents. Audio cues that align with scents matter too, which we’ll discuss below.