The scent of Overdelivering Experiences
We bet you’ve heard it before and not just once: Overdelivering to your customers is the key to success. Focus on offering your community the best experience they could have, and the results will show up naturally.
But what is that supposed to mean when we’re talking about Brand Communication?
Well, offering a 360-branding experience is a complete mix of communication tools experts use, to shape a brand’s identity as authentic and sensorial as possible. This whole package is recommended to reach out the customers through all the 6th senses.
Today, we wanted to focus on the importance of one of these 6th, the olfactory sense, when it comes to brand communication. For that, we approached Alex Cucu, CEO of ScentLinQ, one of the biggest players in the industry in Europe to share with us inside tricks and tools they use to enhance brands identity by using smell. We invite you to check the outcome below!
- BRAND MINDS: Scent::LinQ has worked with a large variety of international brands while being the lead player market. That means you have built a rich background in the industry plus a good indicator that your work delivers satisfactory results. Now the first question would be “how is ScentLinQ helping all these brands to find their olfactory identity”.
In Romania, you collaborate with over 100 companies, many of them multinational, among: Romanian Commercial Bank, Rompetrol, Anchor Group, Global Worth, Tiriac Holding, Bavaria Automobile, Miele Romania, Continental Hotels Romania, Athénée Palace Hilton Bucharest, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Cavalli and others.
ALEX CUCU: Scent::LinQ brand is indeed in 40 countries worldwide and some of the highlights are some special projects such as Hong Kong Airport or Disney Resorts in Orlando USA. Disney recently requested signature scent for 3 main hotel concepts in Orlando resorts. Based on Disney brand and marketing management team’s brief and concept details, we have arranged a conference call with our perfumers in Germany, and we finally come up with 3 different scents that was satisfactory to Disney marketing and branding team. For example, a woody scent Red Sequoia for their Animal Kingdom Lodge. As we say, “the scents that touch emotions”.
- BRAND MINDS: Give us three reasons why is it important for brands to have an olfactory identity. How does that help them?
ALEX CUCU: We use scent as an interior design element, just like proper lighting or right music for a hotel or a retail space. Therefore, it is very important to choose the right scent for the right image or concept. Once the right scent is incorporated into the brand identity, the targeted audience associates the scent with the brand.
- BRAND MINDS: Tell us the best olfactory activation Scent::LinQ has created for a brand and what was the audience’s feedback to it?
ALEX CUCU: We have created a signature scent for Tommy Hilfiger stores in Turkey and their customers liked it so much and they started to ask if the store scent is available as a perfume. Another one is the Disney Resorts in Orlando USA Disney has so many hotel guests keep asking if they can purchase `the Disney hotel scent`?
- BRAND MINDS: What has changed in the past 5 years in brand communication when it comes to scent and what is expected to improve in the next 5 years?
ALEX CUCU: In the past 5 years, the scent factor of the overall brand communication became more noticeable. The retailers and hotels feel almost “naked“ without scenting, they say. We think that the scent branding will have a by-product such as scent related new product lines. For example, Four Seasons Hotels asked us to prepare reed diffuser line made with their hotel signature scents to sell at their SPAs.
- BRAND MINDS: Related to your expertise and vision, what could be the next big thing in this industry?
ALEX CUCU: We are working on a project called SCENTDISQ for home scenting. We think a compact scenting system controlled with a mobile app will be a good add-on to our company. And there is an immense request and feedbacks from people all over the world inquiring our scents for their homes.
