‘We’re moving away from age of aesthetics’: The rise of scent marketing

If you’ve ever walked past a Subway restaurant, caught a whiff of that delicious bread cooking and immediately felt hungry, you’ve fallen prey to scent marketing.

Scent marketing is exactly what it sounds like: using smells to manipulate consumer behaviour. That baking you’re smelling isn’t bread at all, it is an artificial scent piped into each store in order to prompt an association each time you’re in the vicinity of a Subway.

During a future-leaning panel at SXSW (South by Southwest) Sydney on Monday afternoon named ‘From First Whiff To Fierce Loyalty’, Suji Sanjeevan explained all about the rapidly growing category of scent marketing.