Can a multimedia experience implant a deep memory and desire for your perfume?

Can a tume trigger a desire for a scent?

    Advertisers, for years, have sought to associate popular musical works with their products. At this time of the year -- the holiday season -- we are hearing the jingle of Christmas tunes on radio and TV commercials. Why? Because the music, it is hoped, will make the listener favorably disposed toward the product.

    While "marketing through music" is a well established technique and millions are spent by marketers to license particularly compelling works of popular music, the use of scent to sell products is just now being explored.

    Anecdotal evidence suggests that certain scents, stumbled upon by accident, can (or may) trigger emotional memories from our past.

    While limited scientific evidence of this phenomenon exists, less if any evidence suggests that visual or aural stimulation can trigger the memory of a scent. But it can.

    Once, while watching a foreign film, a love scene took place in a setting that triggered a strong emotional memory for me and my immediate thought was, "there is a SMELL that goes with that setting and that smell isn't there." Without the smell -- this was a film after all -- the scene, to me, was incomplete.

    Now if asked to DESCRIBE that smell I would have difficulty. Smells can be quite difficult to describe in a way that will communicate with any accuracy to others. We really don't have a language for it and the best description I might have given would be to reference the visual setting -- what the eyes of all who saw the film saw -- and then press them to imagine what the smell would be if all those visual elements came together in physical form.

    As I saw the film I had a longing to smell once again that scent which that scene had revived in my memory.

    So is it possible to create visual and aural stimuli that, when presented to the customer, will embed themselves in  the customer's memory and later trigger a desire to purchase the perfume?

    This is what I am trying to achieve in the presentation I am developing for "Confusion II." I have the scent -- the fragrance -- and the music for it is coming together. I've already started to record the tracks and in the next two weeks I'll start shooting raw footage for the video.

    The actual presentation will be quite simple but my hope is that the video, with special music, will create an emotional experience that will "rub off" and create a desire for the perfume.

    Like the film mentioned above the video presentation will not be smellable. So the plan is to use the video in conjunction with demonstrations of the fragrance. The hope is that together the elements will create an emotional memory and that a future exposures to the video, or possibly the music alone, will trigger a desire for the fragrance.

    The relationship between scents and memories has not been well explored but as marketers we might get a jump on science. Our "proof" of success will be in sales numbers.

    If this strategy can be made to work, it could ultimately be well worth the cost of a few failures along the way.