What will the future smell like? On the face of it, it sounds like a silly question but I believe that by thinking about the question we might be able to glean some insights into the future.
The other day I was in Las Vegas to give a speech to the Food Marketing Institute and it was my good luck to have the opportunity to sit in on a presentation by Martin Lindstrom who is one of the world’s leading branding experts.
His talk was absolutely fascinating and he spent a good deal of time discussing how important the sense of smell is too branding. (To this point, if I say “Crayola” crayon or Play-Doh my guess is that many of you can almost smell those products’ unique scents).
More interesting, however, Lindstrom discussed how certain smells conjure up different emotions for people of different generations. For example, if you were born before 1930 you are likely to enjoy the smell of hay and manure; and if you born before 1960 the smell of freshly cut grass conjures up positive feelings.
Advances in technology, however, have since rendered these smells less popular to younger generations. Due to the immense popularity of the automobile, few of us any longer have much contact with horses and, when we do, we don’t particularly care for the smell of their waste product. With regard to freshly cut grass, it was Lindstrom’s contention that people born after 1960 tend to associate the smell with the chore of working and it is therefore less enticing.
I can’t speak to the intellectual validity of these arguments but it is an interesting thought exercise to consider how the future might change the public’s emotional response to certain smells—as well as how future technologies or products might create new popular scents. For example, if fuel cell technology or biofuels become popular might the smell of gasoline be universally reviled in the future? Could global climate change cause future generations to loath the smell of wood-burning fires or the scent of freshly cut pine trees? Or, perhaps, if self-cleaning and odor neutralizing nanomaterials become the norm could the scent of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder lose its allure?
I don’t know. I also don’t know if new robots, high-powered electric cars or any number of yet-to-be invented products and technologies might have their own unique scents; but I’d be interested in your thoughts on what some smells of the future might be, or on how you think our current association with certain scents might change over time.
