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In the October 1 issue of Marketing News, we're running an interview with C. Russell Brumfield, co-founder of Whiff Solutions, a Clearwater Beach, Fla.-based scent marketing firm, and we decided to continue the discussion in this blog.

Brumfield, author of Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age, has spent a decade consulting with companies on scent's power as a communications tool, which can trigger memories, conjure mental images and prompt emotional responses that create valuable associations in consumers' minds.

Check out the October 1 issue of Marketing News to read the first half of the interview and read the rest below:

Q: What’s your background and how did you get into scent communications?

A: I had a pre-med major and a psych minor back in the day when I was young—even though I became a caterer and then an event planner.

I grew a design business, and in the ‘90s, we were designing experiential design and retail, entertainment, theme park environments, that kind of thing. So I come from a background of an entrepreneur—I grew a $20 million company—and I kept seeing that there was a hole in the multi-sensory experience. We saw [the use of scents] in theme parks; Disney started it.

I became very interested in the subject, and in about 1997, I read a book, a science book about scents. … It was called Smell: The Secret Seducer, by Piet Vroon, and I became fascinated. I saw all the marketing aspects in reading this book. It was a science book for science people, but I saw how it could really affect marketing.

I then encountered a man who was a Disney Imagineer, and he brought me a machine and said, ‘I’d like you to help to market this.’ (My company was an event company, called Wizard Studios. We were in house over at Orlando’s Disneyworld as a supplier.) His name was David Martin and he became really the first commercial producer of a technology that could put scent in the air.

Disney’s been using this for years, since the ‘80s; and maybe in the late ‘80s, they started marketing and upping their sales by putting out little scents of food down on Main Street. So I got all excited about that and spent six months with that man, but the machine wasn’t that good. And that’s how I got into it.

Q:What other industries are you working with?

A: Instead of being an individual consultancy company, we’re also trying to be a brain trust and part of the scent marketing industry, and also a brain trust for certain technological delivery system companies.

The biggest issue that we have right now in this industry is that [clients] don’t want to talk about [their involvement in] it, honestly. ... We’re talking to a lot of different styles of companies, but Whiff Solutions is actually doing a lot of back-up work for the major technology deliverers. …

Retail and hospitality are the main players. Casinos got into this 10 years ago after the studies showed magnificent increases in slot machine usage, 45 to 52% increase in slot machine usage, and you will find scented casinos in, well, just about every casino now. …

Hospitality got on the bandwagon in the last few years. … You’re either subject to a complete, sterile environment or you’re going to be subject to whatever the last scent was that was in this room. The lady, the guy or the package sitting on the floor, or whatever incident might have happened in the last hour is the scent of your brand. They’re now realizing that and they’re now managing that [by] having a scent policy.

Grocery store chains, the bakery area versus the meat area. … Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, they’re using scent. Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch. The high-end stores are now getting into the game.

There are between one and 3,000 machines a month, environments being scented, around the world right now. … And it is mostly in retail and in the hospitality area, but I’ll tell you where it’s big and it hasn’t touched yet, and that is in product manufacturing. Brand identification. The counterfeit market is $1 trillion worldwide, and that’s an amazing amount of money, to realize that from Gucci to even Harley’s jackets to pharmaceuticals are being counterfeited. Because anybody can make a Gucci bag in a warehouse or a garage anywhere around the world, but they cannot create micro-encapsulation. They cannot create that branded signature scent. We’re getting some response from that. These are some new paradigms that we’ve come out with in the last couple of years. …

The areas of product manufacturing and publishing, these are brand new areas and they’re low right now, but we’ll be touching them.

Video gaming? It’s going to be big. You’re going to see it. … Why does that matter? Because of brand loyalty and emotion. The video game industry, which is massive anyway with the youth, it involves emotion and emotional branding, and a kid will play that video game hundreds of times, over and over again. You add scent? It tattoos a much higher emotional impact and we realize that. …

The movie business is now releasing scent. … We realize that old advertising is not working and that’s what’s the biggy. This is all brand new stuff and a new avenue. We realize that product placements are more evident. Well, highlight that product placement and brand your message in the theater with scented editing tools. … The woman and the man in the movie, they’re having a sensual moment, and the perfume is a branded perfume. Maybe we know what it is—Chanel—or it’s a brand-new one and the product placement now is tattooed in my brain. Now how do [movie theaters] pay for that delivery system? … They put popcorn and chocolate scents into the theaters in the middle of the movie. … Concession sales is where the movie industry makes their money. … This is all in the works, by the way. …

And by the way, when the home delivery system comes, the home entertainment systems first for video gaming—this already exists by the way, the scent release system, which is a small little dome-shaped piece with Blue Tooth in it that is [attached] to a little box on your TV—when Betty Crocker comes on your TV at night, or Domino’s pizza, and it actually does a little puff from the trigger cartridge that you got through the mail that month because of all the movies with product placements that were selling their scents, you’ll end up being triggered in your living room.

Q: That’s something that consumers will have to buy into, though. It’ll be voluntary. You can’t automatically equip new home entertainment systems with these things and just bring advertisers’ scents into the home.

A: The home release system? They’re trying to package them. I’ll tell you that they’re hitting walls because this is something that’s not like anything else. It’s not like TV. Scent is finite and it’s a resource and it’s going to run out, so it’s about asking the client to actually get it in the mail and put the cartridge in every month. And we know that that can happen with video gaming, we really feel that. … They’ve got a row to hoe as far as getting [scent release systems] into the living room.

Q: It sounds invasive to me, though, as if marketers are trying to extend their reach too far by bringing their signature scents into your living room. Unlike other marketing messaging, unwanted commercial scents aren’t easy to ignore.

A: No, no, no. Let’s just realize the angle. It’s all about the angle. Now think of this: We spent $8 billion wholesale on bringing scent into our homes with these candles and these fresheners. There were 18,000 candle fires in the United States last year from those candles. 18,000. The deaths were daily. The future lies in a safe and simple scent release system.

We’re bringing the scent into their homes. If I can have a scent release system that has all those candles in a little dome that’s sitting on the side of my couch for my own use, for my cinnamon or whatever. I personally use patchouli every day in my house. So whatever it is that I want, I’m not having to light incense or light a candle or worry that I forgot to blow out the candle on the way to work. That’s the angle to get into the home, and that is your own personal choice. … But you consider it invasive?

Q: If I were to get a scent release system to replace my scented candles and then choose the scents I want it to emit, and if advertisers were to use it as well, letting off little puffs of their signature cookie scent and making me want to reach for the Mrs. Fields or Chips Ahoy cookies, that might be invasive. It’s not like a commercial that you can turn away from. You have to breathe, after all. And who’s to say that I want my house to smell like cookies? (I guess that’s a bad example!)

A: Well, if you get it for free, that’s exactly how they bundle everything else [with ads] when you get something for free.

But I’m not going to tell you that we know the strategy that works. We know the technology’s being built. We know that there are big dollars behind different areas. And we know some major companies are actually financing some of these. Some of these things will fall by the wayside; some won’t. … It hasn’t been figured out yet.

Just realize that the technology is there. And marketers can see what’s available and see what’s coming, and they can pick and choose the area and how they want to deliver [scents] in order to reach the customers emotions, and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to cut through the clutter. …

Are we triggering a sale by marketing? No, we’re trying to get noticed. We’re trying to increase the perception. And I must say that there are going to be naysayers in this field and there are also going to be consumers who shout, and I understand that. Let’s just use the word: manipulation. When McDonald’s knows that yellow and orange really says the message of cheap or fast … or when they put a picture of a hot boy or girl up on the Times Square billboard with little speedos on looking naked, is that manipulation? No, we would say. … It’s all the same. It’s pleasing, branding, an experience that draws you into the product.

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Amidst all the doom and gloom lately, it was nice to see some positive news come out about the marketing world this week. Many major ad agencies apparently are doing a better job of hiring a diverse groups of employees, according to the New York City Human Rights Commission.

Two years ago, 16 agencies signed an agreement that included minority hiring goals. Eleven of those met or exceeded their goals for 2007, says Patricia Gatling, chair of the commission, speaking at a public hearing. The average goal for diverse hiring was 18% but the average result among shops that met or exceeded that goal was 25%. Some agencies, like Ogilvy, are increasing their goals for this year.

Diversity in hiring means diversity in ideas which means more creativity and better advertising, PR and marketing efforts. That equation should be clear to everyone in the business by now. And hopefully its reached agencies outside of New York as well.

Bravo to the agencies that met or surpassed their goals and work harder for the others.

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There are few in marketing who can legitimately claim guru status – people who early on shaped the way marketing has been practiced for decades. Today on Marketing News Radio I spoke with one of those people -- Jack Trout. One of his earlier works almost 30 years ago defined how companies approached market leadership, and his soon-to-be-published book will hope to correct some of the mistakes that he feels we’ve been making. That seminal book I was talking about is Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Well, Jack has written a new book called In Search of the Obvious and he’s taking marketers and companies to task for creating a complex mess out of something that should be, well, obvious. Trout earned his reputation with practicing his own preaching -- focus on one thing and be known for it. Well, no one can argue his credentials in helping companies find their singular identity. And from that experience he is decrying the state of marketing today and pointing a finger at marketers who have gotten lazy in the face of stiff competition, and at Wall Street for focusing on generating profits rather than building brands and customers. Based on research spanning 70 categories, Trout has noticed at least a 10% increase in commoditization turning products into placeholders, and brands into price points. In today's show he offers a straightforward four-step process for marketers to use to battle the trend toward commoditization, and highlights the five-ingredient formula for being obvious to the consumer. Though Trout can't be credited with keeping up-to-date on the latest technology and new media, he does admonish marketers who put the medium before the message. If the singular idea and story is the nail, the medium is the hammer. It doesn't matter if that hammer is social networking or direct mail -- you're only measuring its ability to drive home the message. A great show today with one of the founding fathers of marketing. Make sure to listen for his predictions of what it will take to survive the future. -- David Kinard, PCM Host, Marketing News Radio

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The sales forecast for the holiday season is growing grim. Columbus, Ohio-based TNS Retail Forward released its fourth quarter sales projections this week, predicting just a 1.5% growth across all sectors, the least amount since 1991. Economic woes, the high cost of gasoline and the instability of the housing market are largely to blame. The research firm projects that the winning formats this year will be mass retailers, supercenters and warehouse clubs; the losing formats include the home goods channel and department stores. Online sales are expected to grow at 9%, the first time the online channel has experienced single-digit growth since the 1999 holiday season. Still, the forecast projects $42.5 billion in sales online for the fourth quarter, up from $3.5 billion last year. The kicker is that the research for the projections was done well before Wall Street experienced its incredibly tumultuous week. So now what?

Posted by Allison at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The presidential election is just 47 days away, and according to the latest Gallup Poll, Barack Obama is ahead of John McCain, 47% to 45% (with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points). According to the latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Obama leads, 42% to 39% (+/- 4 percentage points). And according to the latest Newsweek poll, it's a dead heat at 46% a piece (+/- 4 percentage points). (A compilation of polling numbers is available here.)

Polling is not an exact science, but market researchers can learn a lot from presidential election polls.

So said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, at the AMA's Marketing Research Conference in Boston this week.

Yesterday, Taylor gave a presentation called "What Marketing Researchers Can Learn from Polling Conducted for Candidates and the Media." He outlined a handful of lessons, such as "understanding motivation is very difficult but vital" and "forecasting requires both good research and good judgment."

He quoted James Madison: "The larger the country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained, and the less difficult to be counterfeited." And he also addressed an important question:

Are pollsters' election predictions good or bad for the market research industry?

Election polling often isn't representative of the election's ultimate outcome, and sometimes the numbers can be way off-- so far off, in fact, that some people question polling's usefulness.

Taylor posits that when election polling numbers are far off the mark, some might say that they reflect poorly on market research as a whole; but when they're close to reflecting the ultimate outcome, they can serve to validate market research methods.

What do you think? Do inaccurate election polls reflect poorly on the market research industry as a whole?

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Watch for the Oct. 15th issue of Marketing News, we’ll be running the first in a series we’re calling Austerity Marketing. This first article will look at consumers’ mindset in this difficult economy and how consumer marketers are reshaping their messages in the face of almost constant negative economic and financial news.

For our next piece in this series, we’re already in search of BtoB marketers who are adjusting or changing their marketing messages, strategies and plans for 2009 because of the economy. If you’re one of those –we’re looking for people from all sizes and shapes of BtoB companies – drop me a line or leave a comment here and we’ll be in touch.

My wife does BtoB marketing for a software company here in Chicago. She happened to call me from the road today and I asked her how she’s adjusting (that’s the hazard of being married to a journalist, you never know when an interview might start).

Her first thought was that this is a good time to step up marketing to show that your company remains strong even in these tough times. If your competitors are cutting back, you’ll stand out (we have an article and a column on that philosophy in our Oct. 15th issue too.) Her next thought was that it’s a good time to go to vendors and renegotiate for better prices. She promises me more tips when she gets home later this week.

Send us yours in the meantime.

I’m also working on another story for an upcoming issue looking at how to monitor social communities for comments, criticisms, etc. about your company. If you’re doing that and have good advice to share, write me at jfrank@ama.org, or leave a comment for this post.

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Who cares if it is the right or wrong pespective, at least it's a fresh one. That's the impression I got after talking with Jonathan Salem Baskin -- author of the soon-to-be-released book Branding Only Works on Cattle. He joined me on the September 10 edition of Marketing News Radio. Branding is one of those perennial subjects. There is always a new book, a new guru, and a new set of experts on the topic. And this show has featured a number of them; and will likey continue to do so. But Baskin says that what we've been doing is following a broken model, one that has not adjusted to the modern customer, and is based on an outdated premise that we can actually manipulate customers to emotionally connect with our products. With pithy statements like, "Your customer is only as loyal as their last purchase," and "we've confused the medium with the message," Baskin suggests that brand preference is no more than routine and habit, not an emotional affinity. And, to back that up a recent USA Today article indicated that consumer trust in American corporations is at an all-time low. Whether you agree with Baskin's significant stab at the modern branding practice or not, one thing you can't deny is his compelling arguement that change is needed. Consumers are overwhelmed with choices, intollerant with poor customer servies, and impatient for companies to catch up with them. -- David Kinard, PCM Host, Marketing News Radio

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I always have trouble getting work done on 9/11, no matter how many years have passed since 2001.

On the day it all happened, I was working as the Chicago reporter for PRWeek magazine, frantically trying to get through to the main office in New York and wondering where everyone I knew -- coworkers, family and friends -- was. In the days following, I was writing about how public relations and marketing campaigns for consumer goods ground to a halt while news focused on the tragedy and its aftermath.

And, by the end of that week, I was in New York (via a Greyhound bus), moving my mother to Chicago, something we had planned long before but which took on new urgency.

I was born and raised in New York. I went to a high school named Xavier on 16th Street in Manhattan. It’s a Catholic school where a lot of police and firefighters send their children. An incredibly close-knit place, I went to college with three high school classmates and keep in regular touch with many more even today, more than 35 years after I graduated. On 9/11/2001, 65 people associated with that school – alumni, parents and other relatives – died in the Twin Towers.

Yesterday, I happened to hear from a high school friend who told me how he spent two weeks at Ground Zero (he’s a volunteer firefighter as I recall) right after 9/11 searching for remains of his closest friend. Another high school friend works for one of the engineering companies that was involved in cleaning up the site. Three of my cousins worked in the area then, one in the U.S. Customs House that was also destroyed.

Even though seven years have passed, it’s all still very real and very immediate in New York. I suppose I worry that the rest of the country is forgetting. Of course life has to go on and we all have jobs to do, but I wonder if Sept. 11 shouldn’t be a national day of remembrance. Turning it into a holiday when we’re all off from work doesn’t seem right somehow. That doesn’t say tribute as much as it does, ‘oh boy I get to sleep late today.’

What do you think, how do we market the idea of a national day of remembrance where we pause from our daily routines? Am I completely off base on this?

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I always enjoy a good marketing hook (I would say gimmick but I know that’s a loaded word that upsets some of you). I came across one this week in a mediapost.com story about Smart USA, which distributes the Smart car here in the States.

Smart has cut a deal with a New York City parking operator to offer 50% parking discounts for Smart cars at its lots around the city.

Smart cars are tiny, even smaller than Cooper Minis, measuring only 106 inches long. I think when I was in college, we had sub sandwiches longer that at dorm parties.

I love the whole concept of the special parking rate. Parking is beyond precious in New York; if you haven’t tried it lately you probably don’t know that you need to bring your entire 401K along to pay for an hour or two in a lot or garage.

So this deal will get attention even from non-Smart car owners. Plus, its just fun, the little car getting the little parking rate, kudos to everyone involved.

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I went to a fascinating presentation last week called “The Double Bind Dilemma” put on by the Chicago region of the Network of Executive Women. The evening’s two speakers were discussing why women still are so under-represented at the CEO level in Fortune 500 companies and, really, across corporate America.

The root of the problem dates back to the post-World War II era when the mores of modern corporate America were formed, contends Bridgett Brennan, CEO of Female Factor, a Chicago firm that consults on marketing to woman.

Men coming out of the military moved into corporate leadership then, bringing with them not only male qualities but also military devotion to achieving results with a minimum of discussion or debate.

As a result of all that, characteristics that are essentially male traits became associated with leaders. People, both men and women according to even recent surveys, say that male traits define a leader. That leaves women in that double bind of the evening’s title. If they try to act more male to get ahead, people call them too tough (and other derogatory terms we won’t repeat here). If they act like themselves, they’re not acting male enough to be considered leaders.

For all that to change, employers have to be aware of stereotypes and be constantly working to address them in a given company culture. Even small gender stereotypes should be addressed.

The evening’s other speaker, Laura Sabattini, director of the research department at Catalyst, which does research of gender stereotyping, mentioned that when she teaches sessions on stereotyping she starts with a simple exercise.

She asks male students to spend an entire day smiling constantly while she asks her female student to spend a day never smiling. The reason? Stereotypes say women should smile and men shouldn’t. So her smiling male students often get stopped and asked if they’re drunk while her female students get stopped and asked what’s wrong.

That emphasizes the insidiousness of stereotypes. We become so enmeshed and surrounded by them, we don’t see they’re there. We could all do a better job, not only with gender stereotypes, but with all stereotypes in our lives and in our businesses. Forget thinking outside the box, stop stereotyping the box and broaden your world view to become more effective at whatever you do.

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Marketing research and ROI command the spotlight in the September 1st issue of Marketing News, which made its way to your mailboxes this week. If you haven't done so already, glean some insight from the experts featured in our "10 Minutes With..." Q&As: Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, and Steve Tipps, SVP and director of research and development at Copernicus Marketing Consulting.

Also in this issue:

- Freelance writer Jeff Borden explains how Cisco Systems Inc. humanized its technology to target not only professional techies but also tech amateurs the world over.

- Barry Herstein, CMO of PayPal Inc., shares a bit of his experience and insight in our "BackPage" department.

- And as a special treat, we're running a guest column by Neil Holbert, a teacher and writer, and an AMA member since 1961.

Please take a look at the issue and let us know what you think.

Also, coming up in our September 15th issue, we'll be delving into the consumer privacy issues surrounding behavioral targeting online. It's a timely issue and one that bears watching. In fact, our story went to printer earlier this week and we already have an update:

This week, NebuAd, one of the major players in the behavioral targeting space, announced that its founder and CEO, Bob Dykes, is resigning. Dykes leaves to take a job at electronic payment systems provider VeriFone but will continue to serve as NebuAd's chairman of the board, according to a Washington Post report.

Several Internet companies have delayed or canceled scheduled trials with NebuAd's behavioral tracking platform following congressional inquiries into online behavioral ad practices and privacy concerns.

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I saw an interesting story today about Wendy’s planning to expand its 99-cent menu at a time when competitors like McDonald’s have been contemplating trimming their similar offerings.

So does Wendy’s know something that its competitors don’t? Or is this just a matter of one competitor deciding to zig while the others zag to see if it will work? Wendy’s is about to come under new management, maybe this is the old management’s last hurrah?

And what is the value to a brand, even a fast-food brand, to have low-priced items on its menu? In today’s market, when consumers are trading down and cutting back on seemingly almost all their spending, it would seem to make sense to cut prices and tout that fact in every marketing effort you put out there.

But the other side of that has been rising commodity prices that have squeezed franchise operators at McDonald’s, Burger King, and elsewhere that offer 99-cent items.

National quick-food parent companies really have to market to two audiences –consumers and the frachisees who operate their stores. The messages each of those groups want to hear may conflict sometimes, that’s when it gets interesting.

It’s getting interesting now. McDonald’s in recent years has done a good job in repositioning and reinvigorating its brand. Burger King seems to be all over the map, I’m not sure it really has a clear-cut marketing message right now. Wendy’s has faced marketing issues since its founder, a cornerstone of its image, died.

Personally I’d like to see Wendy’s do well again simply because I always enjoyed seeing it positioned as the upstart chain with the better burgers.

My wife (a marketer herself, by the way) and I were just discussing how in the late 1970s when Wendy’s was just starting its national expansion, going to a Wendy’s seemed like such a treat compared to going to McDonald’s or Burger King. I don’t think a bigger 99-cent menu will get me to feel that way about Wendy’s again. I hope the new owners find more long-term ways to rebuild that brand’s image.

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