A YouTube interview (Simon Sinek with scent designer Dawn Goldworm) exploring how smell links to memory and emotion, cross-cultural differences in scent perception, and Dawn's career from perfumery school through a decade at Coty to pioneering scent branding (including scenting Simon Sinek's book with a fragrance called the "smell of optimism"). The conversation highlights vanilla/vanillin's connection to early comfort (breast milk), Dawn's work on mass-market and celebrity fragrances, and her shift toward applying scent strategically for brands.
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The sense most closely connected to memory is smell.
It's conditioned. Right. So depending on your culture, your generation, and your living environment, you smell different ingredients, different fragrances, and they're linked to different emotional experiences you're having. So, like the smell of cow, for instance. If someone lives in a rural environment, they don't think anything of it, but other people are like, oh, my God, what's that smell?
Whereas as a New Yorker, the smell of garbage I find unoffensive, but the smell of cows, absolutely awful.
Yeah, exactly.
Are there particular scents that are universally around the world, liked?
Yes. Vanilla. Vanilla is the chemical sister of an ingredient called vanillin, and vanillin occurs in breast milk. So the first time your mother is holding you, you feel safe, you feel loved, and you're smelling her breast milk, you're smelling maybe some kind of baby product. It reminds us of being coddled in safety and comfort and mommy and all the good things, which is why we.
All love vanilla, because it's basically babyhood.
Don, thanks for joining me on the old podcast.
It's fun to have you on, because I think what you do is so fun and so special. Just to give people a little context for how I know you and how we met. You and I, by sure coincidence, were seated at the same table at some event a lot of years ago, and I had heard your presentation that day about using scent as a for branding, and I thought your presentation was amazing.
Thank you.
By sheer coincidence, we were sat seated next to each other at the dinner, and I leaned over to you, and I said, could you scent a book? Is that possible? And you went, yes, that's possible. And I said, has it ever been done before? And you said, no, I don't think so. I said, I would like to send a book. And this became the beginning of a partnership and friendship of the two of us.
Yes.
And for those of you who've ever read, my book, together is better. Spoiler alert. Because we've always kept it a secret, so it's a little surprise for people who buy it. But the book is scented, and you develop that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism.
Yes, it is. The smell of you, the smell of.
Me, the smell of my personality.
Right.
So, first of all, let's take a. Let's go back down memory lane. You are what is called a nose, meaning you develop scents for a living. And you have been doing this for how long?
I started in my early twenties in perfumery school. So long time. Like a quarter of a century.
Okay.
Ouch.
So you're this, I assume for most people who are noses, perfume is the direction you generally go in.
Yes. You can go into fine fragrance, which is perfume for skin. You can go into ancillaries like body wash, shampoo, etc. You can go into home care, laundry detergent. You can also become a flavorist and develop flavors, which is the same industry. Most people don't know that.
Interesting.
The taste of Coca Cola, Dan and yogurt. Everything that we put into our mouth is flavored by the same people that create fragrance. But in general, the perfumery school that I went to, you would become a fine fragrance perfumer for skin.
Okay, so perfumes that you buy traditional, traditional perfume, then what is the path? Because you worked at the highest levels. I mean, you were working perfumes for names that we know.
I worked for coty for almost 10 years, and I did everything from Lady Gaga to Adidas to the Beckhams, most of the mass market fragrances in the United States and a lot in the rest of the world. Sure.
So if you ever wore Lady Gaga's perfume, you were the one who developed that?
I did.
Which is kind of cool. That's very cool, actually. You developed the smell of Lady Gaga?
Sure.
Okay, so how do you go from what I would call a fairly traditional, successful career as a nose in a. In a perfume direction to really pioneering? Because you are a pioneer in this space. Really pioneering, using, leaving perfume to make sense for brands like, how did that even. I'll be honest with you, in all the years I've known you, I actually have no idea how that you went from that to the other thing.
You know, when I, when I had my nose tested, I was. I was finishing up graduate school in London. I was an art history major, and then I did a master's in art business. I thought I was going to be in the art world, and it didn't turn out that way. I interned at Avon when I was young, and then someone from Avon called me and said, hey, we have a spot. Do you want to work for us? And I wasn't sure, but I came back to New York and she sent me to her perfumery school and I had my nose tested. I had no idea that I had this innate ability, which is, by the way, like any ability, 5%, and then it's 95% blood, sweat and tears after to learn how to use it. And I fell in love with it. I fell so deeply in love with it that when I started developing fragrance for skin, I was like, there has to be more. And it has to be more than just applying it to skin. And so I went back to graduate school at NYU in the evenings, while I was in perfumery school in the morning, working at Cody at this point during the day. And I started looking into the psychology behind scent, the little research that was at the time, the sociology around scent, behavioral aspects behind scent, anything that I could tap into, consumer identities studies, anything I could find. And then I made it into a business case. I was like, what if brands could apply scent and have that same emotional bond that we do when we apply it to our skin or to our babies or to our house? And this is how it was born.
And I think people don't realize that the sense most closely connected to memory is smell.
Oh, yeah. So if you think about how you process the other senses. So if you think about your sense of sight, your sense of touch, your sense of taste, your sense of hearing, once you get that input, it has to go through many neural pathways to get to the place in the brain that comprehends what it actually just heard or felt or saw. Your nose odor molecules kind of float around the outside of your nose. They go up your nose, and at the top of your nose is the only place that your brain is exposed to air. And so the odor molecules go right up to your limbic system. It's a super highway. No, stop.
