Directly into the brain.
Fragrance expert Miro Branimir Senjak on the underestimated value of fragrances in packaging design and opportunities for food manufacturers: “Usingsynaesthesia as a product development method offers endless opportunities and enables an authentic experience of the product at the point of sale.”
What does the drink taste like, i.e. what does it smell like? What color is the smell? What does the smell feel like? What sound does it make?
The sense of smell is one of the oldest senses in evolutionary biology and is therefore also known as the primal sense. The most important functions of the sense of smell are, on the one hand, the sensory perception of enjoyable foods, beguiling flowers in nature and attractive people and, on the other hand, the warning of danger, such as the smell of spoiled food or smoke from fires. Smell is therefore a very intuitive means of communicating attraction and repulsion from the environment to us humans. The sense of smell is the only sense that is transmitted directly to the limbic system without any other nerve cells in between. In the limbic system, the odor impulse then directly generates an emotion.
If you look at the packaging market in the food & beverage sector, the focus is on visual appeal. New launches in particular must arouse the customer’s interest and make them curious to buy. For many years now, haptics have been playing an increasingly important role alongside visual packaging design. Thanks to various paper surfaces, embossing techniques and finishes, the haptic perception of the packaging is part of the second dimension of the multi-sensory experience of brands.
In addition to acoustics, smell in particular is still an underused tool for marketing packaging. Humans have five different taste receptors on the tongue, namely salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. With a severe cold, the sense of smell with its more than 350 different olfactory receptors is missing when eating and drinking. It looks like a black-and-white picture that can only be experienced at a rate of just over 1% without color, if you put the different types of receptors taste to smell in a ratio of 5:350.
Release fragrances during unpacking
So it’s time to focus on the 99%. A good option here is to print encapsulated fragrances that are released when the product bursts. This can be printed under a perforation or as a scratch-off field on the packaging. Another option is to incorporate the fragrances into the adhesive. For years, APPLE has been looking for a pleasant adhesive fragrance for its packaging that smells fresh and technical and is slightly reminiscent of the fruity-green top note of pineapple, like the fragrance raw material cyclogalbanate – the scent of innovative technology. New fragrance raw materials are regularly launched on the market, which are becoming increasingly stable and skin-friendly and can be easily encapsulated or further processed.
The targeted use of fragrances in packaging is still in its infancy, especially in the food & beverage sector. The big trend here is synaesthesia, i.e. the translation of the brand essence into all sensory channels. The sense of taste, which consists of 99% smell, should set the tone here. Manufacturers should ask themselves the following questions: How does the drink taste, i.e. how does it smell? What color is the smell? How does the smell feel? What sound does it make?
Using synaesthesia as a product development method offers endless opportunities and enables an authentic experience of the product at the point of sale. We live in a time in which more knowledge is available than ever before. The task now is to network this knowledge and further develop the technology in order to realize innovations.
Miro Branimir Senjak, April 2021
About the author: Miro Branimir Senjak is an experienced fragrance marketeer and trained perfumer with his own fragrance laboratory in Zurich. This is where trendy, individual and conceptual fragrance creations of the future are created.
