Dora Baghriche grew up in Algiers, where the aromas of jasmine, pine, orange blossom and Mediterranean salt swirled around her.
“Both of my grandmothers were chefs, so I grew up in kitchens and smelling the fields of flowers around our house,” she said from Paris. Baghriche, a perfumer at Firmenich, the fragrance development company, has since created fragrances for fashion houses such as Yves Saint Laurent and Estée Lauder.
But one of the most unusual challenges of his career came when an unexpected brand asked him to design a fragrance for its new spaces called “experience centers.”
The brand was Mastercard, which baffled Baghriche, 43. “When Mastercard told me what they wanted to do, my first question was, ‘Why?’” he said.
The mission behind the experience centers is to give the credit card giant a physical footprint for its brand and showcase its newest technology. This was uncharted territory for Mastercard, and the company’s marketing team wanted to create a space that engaged all of the customer’s senses.
Companies using custom scents in their spaces is nothing new. Luxury hotels, for example, have been designing their own candles for decades. But smell is becoming part of brand strategy for companies in unexpected industries.
Fragrances have not been a big consideration for marketing departments in industries such as insurance and financial services. But physical spaces are now doubling as unorthodox marketing efforts. Luxury car brands, like Genesis, operate white-tablecloth restaurants with top chefs.
Credit card companies have been especially active in this new area: Mastercard has its “experience centers” in cities such as Dubai, Mexico City and New York. American Express has exclusive VIP lounges in airports.
How a place smells is now something companies need to think about, in the same way they choose chairs.
They also need to give them room in the budget. “A custom scent can cost between $5,000 and $65,000,” said Dawn Goldworm, co-founder of 12.29, a scent branding company.
Perfumers like Baghriche are often tasked with creating scents that live on the skin, where biochemical reactions can alter the way a fragrance smells on different people. But how do you create a stable scent for millions of square meters of commercial space?
Part of the answer is to create a fragrance that doesn’t make anyone run for the exit. “Universality was a really important factor,” Baghriche said. “We didn’t want to design anything that would be shocking to a specific culture.”
By: TM BROWN
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6961342, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-30 19:00:06
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