The Postman Always Sniffs Twice

The U.S. Postal Service has finally waddled into the scented postage stamp game, announcing the release on June 20, 2018 of a set of “Frozen Treat” forever stamps. That’s right: America’s first scented stamps will celebrate . . . popsicles.

Could the USPS have picked a more innocuous (and boring!) scented theme?

Also hard to imagine: could they have launched the new issue with a more tepid press release?

The stamps feature illustrations of frosty, colorful, icy pops on a stick. Today, Americans love cool, refreshing ice pops on a hot summer day. The tasty, sweet confections come in a variety of shapes and flavors.

*Yawn.*

Weirdly, while it describes a bunch of popsicle flavors (watermelon, blueberry, orange, strawberry, chocolate, root beer, cola, and kiwi) [Kiwi? Really?—Ed.] the press release doesn’t explicitly say which of these scents will appear on the stamps.

The release also says “Some frozen treats even have two sticks, making them perfect for sharing,” although none of the stamps shows a twin-stick popsicle. Each stamp, however, displays two popsicles side by side. Is the Postal Service trying to tell us that each stamp will feature the two corresponding scents? If so, that would be a philatelic first—in research for my post about smelly stamps I didn’t notice any examples of doubly-scented stamps. You’d think that would be something worth bragging about.

At any rate, the USA has finally joined the smelly stamp club. Here’s hoping the USPS will branch out into more compelling scents and themes. I stand behind the suggestions I made a few years ago:

I think it’s time the U.S. Postal Service joined the party. How about a Boston Tea Party commemorative? Or one for the Washington, D.C. cherry blossom festival? A mint julep scent to celebrate the Kentucky Derby. Why not a series of classic hot rods with scents of burnt rubber, gasoline and asphalt? A firearm series of historic muskets and revolvers with a gunpowder scent would be cool too.

UPDATE May 23, 2018
According to MarketWatch, “Each of the stamps features an image of popsicles in various forms, ranging from fruity to chocolate. The exact scent will be the same for all stamps, and will be announced with the launch of the stamps on June 20.” This is even more confusing. Does it mean the scent will be the same for given sheet of stamps (with multiple scents across the issue) or that the entire issue will feature only a single scent?

ISDP: New Norman Bates Award™ Nominees Plus Helpful Product Reviews

A “super moon” is illuminating the battered roof of FirstNerve Manor and casting such a bright light on the weedy grounds that our lively rodent population is reluctant to venture out. So are we, frankly, yet we had to stagger to the utility shed and hand-crank the generator so we’d have enough current to keep our Toshiba T1100 lit. We take our ISDP deadlines super cereal.

For this month’s round up we begin in the Northeast: “Human Head Discovered In Hempstead Yard.” Hempstead, Long Island, that is, where a passerby who smelled a stench helped discover a decaying human head inside a bag hidden by bushes on a residential yard. Neighbors had noticed a “terrible smell” and a “horrific odor” for days but were reluctant to investigate because two human arms were found in the area the week before. [Say what?—Ed.]

Over in Waterbury, Connecticut, the decomposing remains of a man were found in the woods at the end of a dirt road “after neighbors reported a foul odor.” Results of an autopsy are pending.

Down in lovely Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, residents of a gated community reported a foul odor coming from a home. Firemen who responded to the call saw water pouring down through a ceiling and found a man’s body in the garage. Results of an autopsy are, as they say, pending.

Being from the Bay Area, this headline had us thinking of San Francisco and noir-style detective stories: “Foul smell leads police to dead man in Mission.” But the Mission in question is the Texas town on the Mexican border, where “a body was found after an officer smelled a foul odor” late on the afternoon of July 15. The body appears to be that of a 23-year-old man from El Salvador.


Jarrod Nicholas Tutko

We have a new pair of nominees for the 2014 Norman Bates Award™: Mr. and Mrs. Jarrod Tutko of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The couple had six children ranging in age from three to thirteen, “several of whom suffer from serious medical conditions, including one who is deaf.” One son was confined to a room on the third floor of the family’s house because he was mentally disabled and extremely difficult to control. His father was responsible for his care, while his mother, Kimberly, took care of the other children including a bed-ridden daughter who required around-the-clock care. On a Friday night Kimberly noticed a “strange odor” coming from the third floor and asked her husband about it. PennLive.com reporter Joel Elias fills in the rest:

Her husband, Jarrod Nicholas Tutko, went upstairs and came back with body of their 9-year-old son, Jarrod Jr., wrapped in a sheet and laid him on the bathroom floor, she said.  

Believing the boy had just died, Kimberly Tutko said she pulled the sheet back and quickly realized he had been dead for several days.  

Kimberly Tutko said her husband told her the child died on Tuesday.  

“I said to him ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’” Kimberly Tutko said. “He said he was too afraid to say anything because of other kids in the house.”  

Kimberly Tutko said she then called 911.

Thirty-eight-year-old Jarrod Sr. has been “charged with endangering the welfare of children, concealing the death of a child and abuse of a corpse.” Mr. Tutko has not been charged.

Finally, we offer an item that is not technically an ISDP incident, but which we believe ISDP fans will find intriguing. There was olfactory mayhem at the Alameda County coroner’s bureau in Oakland, California, when the staff opened a body bag received earlier in the day from a funeral home. The remains were those of a mechanic whose “body had been found partially decomposed in his garage where he worked on cars.” The remains gave off “an excessively foul odor” so strong that the coroner’s staff bailed and the building was evacuated.

According to investigators, the funeral home had applied something called Smelleze Eco Corpse Deodorizer to the mechanic’s remains; however the treatment was not thought to be the cause of noxious odor.



Just FYI, the Smelleze product is available from Amazon, at $16.99 for a 2 lb. container. [Order through the Amazon button on FirstNerve and we’ll get a few pennies at no cost to you!—Ed.] The ad copy is priceless: “For a breath of fresh air, simply sprinkle Smelleze® on corpse and smell the difference.”

The customer reviews are even better (click to enlarge).





Happy shopping and see you next time!

Awaken Your Unconscious Emotions . . . With a Nissan Air Freshener

And now for a light and effervescent video to ease you into the weekend. It comes courtesy of Nissan and it’s about a fragrance designed by George Dodd for the company’s electric vehicle, the Leaf. He may look like an overgrown hobbit, but Dr. Dodd has the Irishman’s gift of making any nonsense sound charming. My favorite scene is where the blond technician babe evaluates an air freshener in a wind tunnel. Let’s just say it opens up new realms of olfactory fantasy.

Can the Aroma of Chocolate Save Bookstores?

There has been a lot of press coverage recently concerning a Belgian study on the effects of chocolate scent on consumer behavior in a bookstore. The stories often imply that chocolate scent sells more books, while the headlines play on the idea that scent marketing might mean salvation for the ever-shrinking fortunes of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

As is standard practice here at FN, I prefer not to comment on such massively hyped stories until I’ve gotten my hands on a copy of the actual scientific study. Well, I have and now I will.

Just for fun, let’s start with an example of the standard press coverage, namely David Winograd’s story in the HuffPo headlined “Smell Of Chocolate In Bookstores Increases Sales, Study Finds.” According to Winograd, the study

suggests that the smell of chocolate in bookstores encourages customers to spend more time browsing for books.

This is misleading. In the study, a female observer recorded behaviors of randomly selected bookstore customers in a yes/no fashion; she did not record how much time a customer spent on any activity, nor was elapsed time a variable in any of the statistical analyses. Winograd’s mischaracterization is important, because in other studies have shown ambient scent to increase the time customers spend in stores, which in turn increases the likelihood of a purchase. This new study cannot be interpreted as supporting those results.

Winograd’s summary is misleading for another reason: While chocolate aroma made browsing of romance novels and cook books more likely, it made browsing of history and crime books significantly less likely. In other words, the effects of chocolate aroma on consumer behavior depend very specifically on book genre, an outcome the study was designed to test. Did Winograd miss that? Did he think it would complicate his story line? Did he think it was above the heads of HuffPo readers? Who knows.

The study itself, a collaboration between marketing and communications professors at Hasselt University and the University of Antwerp, turns out to be quite well-designed. It compared consumer behavior in a bookstore under scented and non-scented conditions. The conditions were counter-balanced across mornings and afternoons to eliminate time-of-day effects. (Nice touch #1.) The scent was released from two locations that reached the entire store; intensity levels were set low enough that visitors didn’t spontaneously notice it, but easily recognized it as chocolate when attention as drawn to it. (Nice touch #2.)

The researchers measured a series of behaviors, some general (browsing multiple books, hanging out, chatting with sales staff, etc.) and some goal-directed (marching up to the counter and asking for a specific book etc.). The observer also noted consumer involvement with specific genres of books, two that were congruent with chocolate (romance novels and cookbooks) and two that were not (history and crime). Congruent and incongruent genres were identified through pilot testing. (Nice touch #3.)

The results, though mixed, make a lot of sense. Chocolate scent increased the likelihood of examining romance and cooking, but decreased the likelihood of browsing history and crime. (Results were adjusted for gender bias in genre. Nice touch #4.) In other words, consumer response to an ambient scent depends on how well it matches particular items on sale.

Overall, sales in scented periods were 5.07% higher than during nonscented periods. Sales of congruent genres jumped 40.07%; those of non-congruent genres 22.19%. So Winograd’s headline is narrowly correct. But it misses the important lessons for scent marketers, namely that a campaign should be designed with specific products, scents, and behaviors in mind.

The study discussed here is “Smelling the books: The effect of chocolate scent on purchase-related behavior in a bookstore,” by Lieve Doucé, Karolien Poels, Wim Janssens, Charlotte De Backer, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology 36:65, 2013.

Grrrrah!

On the Berkeley campus last week I caught up with an old Coop pal of mine at the California Alumni Association. Knowing my predilections she gave me promotional item from last year: a “New Stadium Scent” car air freshener with the Cal football home schedule on the reverse side. It’s pretty potent smelling—like a courtesy soap bar from from a lower end motel chain. They could have come to me for better fragrance execution. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

After 87 years atop the Hayward fault, the university embarked on a total rebuild of Memorial Stadium in 2010 while the Golden Bears played at AT&T Park in San Francisco. The new structure retains the original Roman coliseum style exterior but is now seismically up to code along with better training facilities. The 2012 season was the team’s first in the new stadium but it was not a resounding success; they were 3 and 9 overall, 2 and 8 in the Pac 12 conference.

I’ve enjoyed some spectacular Saturday afternoons in Memorial Stadium. If nothing else, the late afternoon view over the rim is worth it: the Bay, the bridges, the fog. Every so often the Bears field a formidable team—in my time the standouts were running back Chuck Muncie (later with the NFL Saints and Chargers), wide receiver Wesley Walker (Jets), and QB Steve Bartkowski (Falcons). More recent graduates include QB Aaron Rogers (Packers), wide receiver DeSean Jackson (Eagles), and running back Marshawn Lynch (Seahawks).

Anyway, all that really counts is beating Stanfurd in the Big Game. (Taking out the trombone player only makes it sweeter.)

Scent Marketing Tips from Babies

The thing marketing experts like best about the sense of smell is its alleged emotionality. Feelings stirred up by odor are supposed to be a hot link to purchase intent. So get something—anything!—under the consumer’s nose and you will reap the benefits of scent marketing.

Cooler heads recognize that odor perception is also cognitive, if not predominately so. Smells have to be consistent with the product image or message; if they are not, consumers will think less of the promoted item or service.

A powerful and related effect is that of context, of sheer juxtaposition in time and place. If smell is part of the background when something memorable happens, that smell becomes a useful way of retrieving the memory. Context-dependent memory cues are a big topic in psychology, and lots of work demonstrates that the phenomenon exists in infants.

Developmental psychologists study it using something called the “mobile conjugate reinforcement task,” which sounds formidable but isn’t really. It consists of a ribbon attached to the baby’s ankle at one end and to a mobile hanging over the crib at the other. When the kid kicks, the mobile jiggles. Babies dig this once they figure it out. And when they are put in the same situation after a long interval (which for a baby is a week), they remember the association and start kicking—as long as the context remains unchanged. But if the classical music in the background has been replaced by jazz, it’s as if they’ve never experienced the kicking-jiggling connection before.

A new study from St. John’s University in New York examines odor as a contextual cue in 3-month-old babies. It extends some previous findings in ways mostly of interest to specialists, but the main result deserves attention. Beginning with the standard mobile-over-the-crib setup, the researchers used ambient scent (cherry or coconut, diffused near the crib for 10 minutes beforehand) as a context cue. A week later, the infant was returned to the crib. In the background was either the original odor, a different odor, or no odor at all.

The researchers quantified the infant’s kicking behavior and compare it statistically to kicking in the first session. Babies who got their original scent kicked more, showing they remembered that kicking causes jiggling. Babies who got a different odor or no odor kicked less; they no longer remembered the link between kicking and jiggling the mobile.

They key experimental difference was providing the original odor cue: it made the difference between remembering and not remembering. Or, as the authors put it, “the effectiveness of a reminder is very specific to what was encoded during the initial acquisition process.”

There’s a scent marketing lesson there. If you are looking to rekindle a specific memory, any old smell won’t do. It has to be the odor that was there when the memory was created. Context matters. Even if you’re only three months old.

The study discussed here is “Odor as a contextual cue in memory reactivation in young infants,” by Courtney Suss, Susan Gaylord, and Jeffrey Fagen, published in Infant Behavior and Development, 35:580-583, 2012.

Nissan Edges Toward a Logo-Scent

A custom scent is part of the enormous, multisensory Nissan exhibit that will tour ten global auto shows this year, beginning with next week’s North American Auto Show.

. . . the Nissan display features its own special scents and sounds, carefully choreographed to create a complete experience for visitors. A distinctive fragrance will be periodically released into the display area and the mood-setting background music will change with a subtly different vibe and energy for morning, mid-day and evening.

Nice touch!

In a video, Roel de Vries, Nissan’s VP of global marketing strategy, describes the scent as modern, vibrant, and exciting. He also calls it is “Oriental” while referencing the fact that Nissan is a Japanese company; so it’s not clear that it smells Oriental in the perfumer’s meaning of the word.

De Vries says that if the scent works well at the trade shows, Nissan may deploy it in the company’s dealerships.

Exactly How Does Scent Encourage Shopping?

By now there are lots of credible studies showing that ambient scent alters behavior. There’s the original Cinnabon Effect study and its recent extension, and some nice work on perfume wearing and spontaneous helpfulness.

In the “Zombies at the Mall” chapter of What the Nose Knows, I took a look at the scientific literature on scent marketing. There too, credible research shows that scent can increase dollars spent as well as boost positive perception of the mall, the stores, and their products.

A common theme in these studies is that the effects on behavior in general, and consumer purchasing in particular, are driven by changes in mood. Thus, the sweet, warm, delicious smell of fresh-from-the-oven Cinnabon buns put people in a more positive mood and makes them more likely to respond to a request for assistance.

This is a plausible but rather limited explanation. Limited because it fails to explain the differential effectiveness of scents that are equally pleasant, and that should therefore produce equal improvements in mood. For example, business school professor Eric Spangenberg found that a masculine scent increased sales of men’s clothing, and decreased sales of women’s items. The reverse effect was found for a feminine scent.

Clearly, something more than emotion is involved. (This is an ongoing theme of WTNK: psychologists for years have overemphasized the role of emotion in odor perception. More and more research shows that people respond to smell cognitively—that is, they compare, contrast, evaluate, interpret and judge.)

The best alternative explanation involves “congruency.” The idea here is that a smell that “goes with” the merchandise on display will enhance consumer perceptions of the goods and increase sales, while a mismatched scent will have no effect, or even decrease sales. Congruency explains Spangenberg’s shopping results much more satisfactorily than does an appeal to mood.

Now the man himself—Spangenberg along with three colleagues—has found perhaps a better explanation. The new idea is “processing fluency,” technically defined as “the experienced ease of processing a stimulus.” Studies find that labels, logos and ads that are more easily processed, i.e., which are more “fluent,” have a bigger impact on consumer perception and sales. Spangenberg’s newly published study pushes the concept into the olfactory realm.

The researchers first came up with a pair of smells—orange, and basil-orange-green tea—that differed in complexity, but were alike in all other key respects. These two scents, along with a no-odor control condition, were diffused into a Swiss home goods store on different days. Random shoppers who had been in the store at least five minutes and who had bought something were given a brief questionnaire.

The bottom line: shoppers in the simple scent condition spent 10 Swiss francs (roughly $10) or more than did shoppers in the complex scent or no-odor conditions. This is a substantial effect and it happened largely without the shoppers being aware of the scent.

Back in the lab, Spangenberg’s group did several follow-up experiments to pin down the precise nature of the effects. The simple odor out-performed the complex and no-odor conditions when it came to a cognitive task involving anagrams. Simple odor results in more anagrams completed and at a faster rate. Finally, the results of the field study were confirmed in a simulated shopping experiment. The authors conclude:

Our results also show that, contrary to conclusions drawn by many retailers attempting to implement prior olfactory research findings, not just any pleasant scent will work to a firm’s benefit. The ambient scents used for this research were equally pleasant, but produced remarkably different outcomes based on scent complexity.

We seem at last to be getting away from the Land of Mood and into a zone where we can use sensory analysis to engineer more effective fragrances for scent marketing.

The study discussed here is “The power of simplicity: Processing fluency and the effects of olfactory cues on retail sales,” by Andreas Herrmann, Manja Zidanseka, David E. Sprotta, & Eric R. Spangenberg, published online in Journal of Retailing, September 17, 2012.

Ummmm . . . steak

News anchor Jenny Anchondo at KOLD-TV in Tucson, Arizona, has video of what must be the world’s biggest scented billboard. The advertisement, for a new type of beef featured at the Bloom grocery chain in Charlotte, North Carolina, propels the scent of hickory barbeque up to fifty yards across the adjoining roadway. (Yes, close observers will note that the visual image is of steak au poivre. And another report describes the scent as black pepper and charcoal.)
In any case, this beats the old smoke-blowing cigarette billboards in Times Square that were scentless.
All of which produced for me a vivid reverie of rodizio at Plataforma Churrascaria on W. 49th. (+Q Perfume are you listening? I want rodizio and I want it NOW!)

Scented Billboards Big Hit with UK Consumers

And if they really like it, they’ll pee on it.

Related: Is there anything scent detection dogs can’t do? Apparently not.

It’s Already Tomorrow in Japan

Like particle beams in a circular accelerator, two Japanese cultural obsessions—smell and technology—have collided to produce a sparkling array of new olfactory devices.

Tokyo’s Promotool Corp. began as a cosmetic sampling outfit. When it invented a one-note cinematic aroma generator for screenings of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the company’s management saw the potential of scent marketing. Since then they’ve placed devices that have boosted curry sales (another obsession!) in supermarkets and coffee sales in convenience stores. According to Promotool president Kenichi Inoue,

It’s difficult not to smell something, and it directly sends commands to your brain, so the promotional effect is big.

Hmmm. Might want to soften the rhetoric a bit, Inoue-san; wouldn't a “polite olfactory suggestion” of curry have an equally big promotional effect?

Japan Times writer Kazuaki Nagata also describes @aroma, a Tokyo firm that has been placing scent devices in hotels and stores to create brand-specific ambience.
Then there’s NTT Com’s i-Aroma device which links to your PC with a USB cable. It contains six aromas that can be released individually or in combinations. NTT is promoting the device in consumer trials this summer featuring online content and smells designed by an aromatherapist(natch!) and an astrologer (whuh?).

Gizmag writer Paul Ridden has the story. He’s old enough—or has Googled long enough—to recall DigiScent’s similar iSmell device. Ridden says

Sadly DigiScents failed to attract the investment it needed and went bust in 2001.

Well, that’s partly correct—I know because I was there. Yes, the company went bust in 2001, but it had attracted tons of money. The problem wasn’t technology or lack of money. But that’s a story for another day.

さようなら

Logoscents: Smells as Trademarks

In the age of multisensory marketing it’s no longer adequate to rely on a word or phrase to identify a branded product. A logo, color scheme, or container shape can speak just as powerfully as a trade name. If so, the manufacturer would be wise to protect these features as part of its intellectual property. Trademark law in the United States allows all sorts of ways to identify and distinguish commercial goods. For example, the tone sequence of NBC’s corporate chimes, the pink color of Owens-Corning fiberglass, and the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle are all registered trademarks under the doctrine of “trade dress.”

It was only natural that someone would register a scent as a trademark. The first to do so was Celia Clarke of Goleta, California who sold yarn and embroidery thread infused with the scent of plumeria blossoms. (Plumeria is the botanical name for frangipani, the fragrant tropical flower from which Hawaiian leis are made.) Clarke’s 1988 application for a scent trademark was denied by the examining attorney at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but she appealed and won. She registered trademark number 1639128 on March 26, 1991 with this description: “The mark is a high impact, fresh, floral fragrance reminiscent of plumeria blossoms.”

Evidently Clarke’s line of scented goods, sold under the brand name Clarke’s Osewez (oh-so-easy, get it?) wasn’t a success. She cancelled the trademark in 1997.

Following in her footsteps, a company in Pompano Beach, Florida filed an intent-to-use trademark application in 1996 for a lemon fragrance to be used in laserjet printer toner. They abandoned the mark two years later.

The first commercially successful product with a trademarked scent is the Fuel Fragrances line produced by the Manhattan Oil company of Redondo Beach, California. These fuel additives give the exhaust of your lawn mower or nitro funny car a distinctive bouquet. The company sells nineteen varieties including Burn Out Blueberry, Peel Out Pina Colada, and Turbo Tangerine. Three of them—the cherry, strawberry, and grape scents—were trademarked back in 1995 and 1997. (Bonus link! The company’s spokesmodel page is SFW, at least if you work in an auto body shop.)

Meanwhile, Amyris Biotechnologies of Emeryville, California recently applied for a trademark on a citrus scent for its synthetic biodiesel fuel made from sugarcane (Serial Number 76693238). Smart marketing move—biodiesel exhaust usually smells like french fries and the production plants can stink. What’s wrong with a little refreshing citrus in the Age of the Goracle?

In 2005, the Minnesota paper goods manufacturer Smead registered six scent trademarks—apple cider, peppermint, vanilla, peach, lavender and grapefruit—for use in file folders, expanding files, and the like. Yummy. Should be a hit in the medical records department.

(Pop quiz on intellectual property law: Is it a problem that Manhattan Oil has trademarked Victory Vanilla scent for a fuel additive and Smead has taken vanilla for file folders? Correct answer is no: they are in different classes of trade and unlikely to be confused by the typical consumer.)

The office will soon smell even better when Japan’s Pentel company follows through on its June, 2008 application for a trademark on a white rose and lily of the valley combination (Serial Number 77511730). There are already scented pens and markers on the market, but Pentel may intend to use a single corporate logoscent for all its stationary, pens, pencils, and markers.
While trademark law is getting a lot more fragrant in the U.S., companies in the European Union will have trouble joining the fun. According to a review in the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, European trademark registrars have take a “regressive line” that “makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to register a smell as a mark.” Apparently providing a chemical formula and verbal description of the scent is not legally sufficient. Scent trademarks will not be permitted in the absence of a “thorough smell classification system.”
Good luck with that, my friends!

Robo Spritzer: The Full Facial

What could be creepier than the department store ladies who offer to spritz you with a cologne sample?

Easy: An in-store kiosk equipped with a real-time video-image analyzer that scans your face, sizes you up, and hits you with a gender appropriate scent. From the manufacturer’s press release:

VidiReports software . . . detects human faces in the vicinity of
the dispenser, estimates the corresponding gender of prospective
customers and sends that information to the Scentys4 dispenser,
which instantly selects the appropriate fragrance.

VidiReports can be easily configured to set the prefered detection
distance and the strategy to be employed when several faces are
detected.

Attention all Scentys4 units: Do not spritz until you see the whites of their eyes!

The TargetScent kiosk is the brainchild of Presensia, a French company that develops interactive scent dispensers, and Quividi, an outfit that creates audience measurement solutions.

Cool technology? Certainly. Innovative application? No doubt. Does it give you the heebie-jeebies? Well, check out this Swiss-French video and get back to me.

Scratch Me, Sniff Me

People climbed aboard the scent marketing train with its December 1st “Sexiest Man Alive!” double issue. The move paid off: despite tough times for print advertising the magazine scored Emporio Armani Diamonds on cover 4 and full page ads for Christina Aguilera Inspire, Aramis Mustang Blue for Men, YSL L’Homme, Avon’s Patrick Dempsey Unscripted, Usher’s UR, and Clinque’s Happy.  Not to mention Hormel Chili and Chapstick. (Well, they’re aromatic too, aren’t they?)

Hugh Jackman may be the SMA! but scratch-and-sniff opps in the “Sexy Scents” story are limited to Chace “Freshly Cut Grass” Crawford, Taye “Vanilla, Chocolate, Sandalwood and Musk” Diggs, Chris “A Day at the Beach” Meloni, and Michael “YSL L’Homme” Phelps.

Jeez.  Talk about your extremely safe scent selections: cut grass and vanilla.  Wow.  No surprise that Aqua Boy continues to reach unashamedly for endorsement gold.  But Mr. Law & Order’s choice is truly lame—it brings to mind Seinfeld's retort to Kramer’s idea for Beach: The Cologne:

You think people are going to pay $80 to smell like
dead fish and seaweed? That’s why they shower.

The scratch-and-sniff placements were interesting: clavicle, armpit and nipple. When I did the National Geographic Smell Survey back in the back in the day, we got tons of reader mail including letters from women who described with anatomical precision where they found their husband/BF’s irresistible natural scent. All the same places. Hmm.

Puzzling that People didn’t trumpet the scent feature. Larry Flynt wouldn’t have missed that bet. He splayed “First Time Ever Scratch’N’Sniff Centerfold” in gigantic letters across the August, 1977 issue of Hustler. The cover image was a female hand with pubic hair peeking between the fingers. A Surgeon General type white box read:

Warning: To be smelled in the privacy of your home.
Not to be smelled by minors.

Now that was inspired, if supremely vulgar, scent marketing. P.T. Barnum would have been proud.

Coming Soon to Your Wallet

An entertaining take on scented credit cards.