Bath and Body Works released scent diffusers in the NYC subway at Grand Central's 42nd Street shuttle, blasting vanilla, pine, and balsam into the air. The MTA says it's their first aroma ad ever. TJ Walker explores why smell is such a powerful but rarely used tool for advertising.
Questions this video answers
Grand Central's 42nd Street shuttle platform.
A blend of vanilla and fresh pine (described as fresh balsam).
Between 20 and 30 pounds of fragrance by month's end.
A pilot program was run in Queens and Brooklyn last year and produced no complaints.
As the MTA's first-ever aroma advertisement.
Chapters
New York subway Debuts Its First Ever Aroma Ad According to the Independent, New York commuters are getting an unexpected holiday surprise. A subway platform that actually smells good. At Grand Central's 42nd street shuttle, Bath and Body Works has installed the MTA's first ever aroma advertisement, filling the air with a blend of vanilla and fresh pine instead of the usual coffee, chemical and body odor. Cocktail. Diffusers mounted above the platform release visible bursts of fresh balsam, one of the company's signature holiday scents. Bath and Body Works expects to disperse between 20 and 30 pounds of fragrance by month's end. Commuters seem pleasantly shocked. One writer told the Independent, it smells better than the normal New York City tunnels. I appreciate it. Another described it as very Christmassy, while others said it reminded them of fabric soft. The MTA says this is the first campaign of its kind and that a pilot program in Queens and Brooklyn last year produced no complaints. For now, at least, New York's most pungent transit hub smells like the holiday. Okay, so what's the real message here? This is good news. New York City subways actually smell so that you don't have to do this. Hold your nose when you walk downstairs into the subway. That's good news. It's also good news for marketers and advertisers. We live in this world where everyone says, oh, it's the same old, same old. How do you do something new and different? Well, this, this is different. You don't have to rely just on the sense of the eyeball for reading or seeing or the ear for hearing. You could use the nose. Hats off to the marketers who came up with this campaign. Let's dig a little deeper here. There's one of the reasons I was fascinated by this is it just. It does show. There's always a new way of doing, you know, famously. More than 100 years ago, the head of the patent law predicted that everything had been. Everything had already been made. The head of IBM once said, I can't imagine there ever being a market for more than five computers in the world. Who else would want. The world is a big place. There are an infinite number of ways of being creative, and putting something that smells good in a place like the New York City subways is brilliant. Now, I spent a lot of time in the subways there, having lived in the city and in and around and about it for about a quarter of a century. I will be. I've been to this very spot in Times Square that they're talking about, and I will be there again next month. Family And I are spending a week vacation between Christmas and New Year's. We'll be up in New York City, and I will be down there and seeing if I can smell this too. It sounds like a great idea. Because as much as I love New York City. And I do, and as much as I love the subway system, because it's frankly so much faster than a taxi or an Uber or a limo in most cases, let's not kid ourselves. It usually smells bad. Like most New Yorkers, I developed a habit of, as I'm walking down the steps to the subway, not even realizing anymore, just shutting down my nose. Okay, say I'm not going to smell anymore because usually it was quite pungent and now their advertisers are actually using. So it's clever. Bath and Body Works is a store that's a favorite of my daughters. And when we go to the mall, I have to go into it. It does often smell nice, but why not put it in a place like the subways? Now, interestingly, the transit authority says they've done a test for this before and no complaints. That surprises because New York City is home to a lot of complainers. There's probably more neurosis and picky, icky people per square inch in New York than any place in the world, certainly country. So whatever they did, I congratulate them on somehow coming up with just the right mix, just the right intensity of a scent that didn't cause people. Because in fairness, some people are just allergic to fragrance. Nothing they can do. They're not picky, they're not neurotic, they just are allergic. Can make their eyes water. So when I first heard this, I thought, wow, this may be really putting people in legal jeopardy. But it's been tested before and there were no complaints. That's great. Scent is a. It's a harder medium to communicate with because if you're an advertiser or a marketer or any kind of a content creator, the easiest thing is to type text. Text can be on a screen. You can print it out, you can make it a billboard. You can do so many things with text. It's so versatile. You can put a piece of paper right in front of someone, but you can also create it 12,000 miles away on your computer screen. And that person can see it in text on their computer. Obviously, video is like that. It's not quite as easy for text, although it's getting easier every day. Audio is like that, although someone has to have. There has to be a speaker, they have to have Ears that are working and not have their ears covered, but using a way of communicating that involves sight or audio. Those are the two most traditional ways of advertising. Well, smell is one of the five senses and it's underused by marketers in part because it's more difficult create a smell in Bangkok. You can't easily have that smell delivered to to a prospective customer in New York City. Although if you send them a durian on an airplane, okay, that smell will translate, but that's not easy and that will get you kicked off airlines as well. I'm referring to the stinky fruit, which I love to eat. But most many people don't like that smell. So just because something is harder doesn't mean you shouldn't try it as a market. Because think of all the publicity that Bed, Bath and Beyond, or excuse me, Bath and Body Works is getting by doing that. I'm talking about it. It's picked up by major news outlets and it's getting more foot traffic. They're reporting posters are asking notice a new scent. So they're combining an old medium of text and a billboard with this new medium of scent in a creative way. It's getting buzz, it's getting attention. So I mentioned it was tested first in Queens and Brooklyn. Of you not familiar with New York City. Those are a part of New York City, but they're not Manhattan. But they are all connected by underground train and a lot of people like it. Now I have done work in the fragrance industry before and I've also worked with companies like the candle making I've worked with where they've got hundreds and hundreds of scents. So it's a fascinating industry. Everyone likes scent for the most part. Again, some people allergic to certainly some people overdo the cologne and perfume and it can be overwhelming and intoxicating. So the candle company I was talking about, Yankee Candle Company, I've had the privilege of working with them many times. Great company and great scents. People like them. But not every scent is for everyone. Once they gave me an experimental scent that that smelled like fresh cut grass. I loved it. I don't know if that became one of their most popular ones, but it really did smell like fresh cut grass. I don't know what the ideal smell is for a New York City subway, but anything that's a little different from its normal smell is probably a good idea.
