If 75 per cent of human emotion is governed by scent, why are marketers still obsessing over what people see instead of what they smell?
That was the question Dr. Suji Sanjeevan posed at SXSW Sydney’s From First Whiff to Fierce Loyalty panel, where the founder of BrandScent made a compelling case for scent as marketing’s most powerful yet overlooked sense.
“Scent marketing focuses on how you make people feel, think and ultimately manipulate behaviour,” Sanjeevan told the packed room.
“It really taps into one of our primal senses, the sense of smell, and it’s about creating an emotion. When you smell something, you create an emotion, and you attach a memory… you might smell something right now, and in 10 years’ time, when you’re reacquainted with that smell, it’ll take you right back here. The sense of smell is the only sense that can transport you back in time”.
From Luxury Lobbies To Everyday Life
Before the pandemic, scent marketing sat quietly in the corner of hospitality and luxury retail.
“Marketing was very linear,” Sanjeevan recalled. “It was very visual, and scent marketing was pretty much restricted to hotels. It was about ambience creation and retail space… but brands were really not tapping into it. It was a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Today that’s changed”.
That shift has since wafted into almost every sector imaginable. Today, BrandScent crafts “olfactory logos” for global names like American Express, Chandon and Domino’s, designing scents that act as a brand’s emotional signature.
“We work with brands in two ways,” she explained. “We can do campaigns, like a one-off scented campaign, or we can create an olfactory logo, which is a brand identity that’s consistent from the first moment a customer comes into contact with you, all the way through the relationship.”
Some collaborations lean playful, others luxurious. “We did one for Domino’s, a scented pizza dough smell, and another for Chandon,” she said. “They wanted to take the scent of their winery in the Yarra Valley wherever they went, pop-ups, airports and activations. It draws people in”
And in a world where “75 per cent of our emotions are governed by scent,” it is truly a huge opportunity that many brands are overlooking.
Turning Imagination Into Impact
In an industry obsessed with ROI, Sanjeevan’s metric of success is refreshingly different. “What’s the ROI? If this is a return on imagination, how wild is your imagination? How big is your dream for your brand to stand out from the crowd?”
That “return on imagination” has translated into measurable results. Take Melbourne’s SkyDeck, for example, where BrandScent introduced a freshly baked cookie aroma to its 88th-floor café.
“We trialled it over the first quarter of 2024 and they saw a sharp increase in sales,” she said. “When a child is hungry, you go up, you get a cookie. When you’re ordering, you smell the coffee, you order a coffee. What was a $0 spend suddenly becomes a $50 spend with almost every family that’s going through”.
At night, the scent shifts to something more sophisticated. “They actually change the smell up – it’s more of a luxury sort of smell. We follow our nose when it comes to any sort of sense. If something smells nice, we gravitate towards it.”
From Medicine To Marketing & Back Again
Sanjeevan’s understanding of the human brain and behaviour runs deeper than most marketers’. Before founding BrandScent, she and her husband both worked in medicine, a background that now anchors their work at the intersection of neuroscience, emotion and brand experience.
“My husband and I were in medicine, so this intersection between neuroscience, sensory marketing and storytelling is where we play,” she said.
“We’ve been working with nursing homes to ensure residents are eating and feel more comfortable… we can increase appetite with scent, relax agitation, and therefore improve staff retention. It’s about using scent marketing for good.”
Their work with aged care facilities has shown how profoundly scent can influence wellbeing. In some centres scent can be used to stimulate appetite among residents who had stopped eating. Others help reduce agitation in dementia wards, creating a sense of familiarity and safety.
That medical insight also underpins BrandScent’s foray into health technology. “We’re prototyping a device that detects your heart rate and releases a scent that makes that person feel safe,” she said. “It’s not visible, it’s not clunky, but it relaxes them. They smell it, and it relaxes them.”
The prototype, she explained, combines wearable sensors with micro-diffusion technology to create a personal “safe zone” for people experiencing anxiety or sensory overload. “When you’re in an open space and your heart rate spikes, the device detects it and releases a familiar, calming scent,” she said. “It could be a fragrance linked to a positive memory, something that grounds you immediately.”
It’s a continuation of BrandScent’s ethos: blending science, empathy and imagination to create experiences that enhance, not exploit, human emotion. For Sanjeevan, scent marketing is about so much more than brand loyalty, t’s about human care.
Smell Meets Storytelling
Sanjeevan’s imagination extends beyond traditional marketing channels, into spaces you wouldn’t expect.
“Who would have thought a soccer club and scent in a good way, not a bad way,” she laughed. “But that’s exactly what’s happening, because soccer clubs entertain corporate clients, and they want those clients to feel exclusive. It’s a different perspective on loyalty.”
She’s also exploring immersive scent integrations in gaming.
“When they’re playing on the soccer field, scents like grass could come out. Or if you’re doing F1 racing, that kind of burnt rubber smell, or that iconic smell of freshly opened tennis balls,” she said, referencing fellow panellist Xavier Muhlebach from Tennis Australia.
“It’s all about bringing people closer to the moment through scent.”
If all that sounds futuristic, the next frontier takes it further still. “Digital scent is exciting and scary at the same time,” Sanjeevan said.
“When we’re walking past a KFC, the scent of KFC comes in. Or you’re standing in a winery in Chandon, that scent comes through. Brands are starting to create scents for that augmented reality and AI future.”
In this vision of 2030, scent becomes the missing sensory layer in digital and mixed-reality worlds, evoking brand experiences that are literally unforgettable.
