Communication Associate Professor Laurence Minsky has written a new article on the invisible world of scent branding for the Harvard Business Review alongside Sixième Son USA director Colleen Fahey and Scent Marketing Inc. CEO Caroline Fabrigas.

Within “Inside the Invisible but Influential World of Scent Branding,” the authors explore the power that scented environments have on customers, writing that “the true power of olfactory branding (also known as scent branding) is in its unique ability to form immediate, powerful, and differentiated emotional connections with customers.” With smell being the sense most closely linked to memory, the authors note that it’s easy for a particular scent to “spark the memory of the associated products or events, even for an incident dating back to one’s childhood. And olfactory recall can extend to 10,000 different odors, if not more.”

For companies looking into developing their own signature scent, the authors offer advice on developing ideal olfactory brand, encouraging those interested to fully understand their “entity’s brand DNA” for the maximum impact on customers. 

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