A Smelly Business - The increased use of Scent Marketing

The town I live in seems to have become increasingly smelly over the past couple of years.

It started with Lululemon. I used to love their fragrance, which you would get a subtle whiff of when going in to the store. Being a Pilates teacher with my own busy studio, I would buy my teaching gear from them and hang around for a chat with the team about the local wellbeing scene. Since developing my sensitvities and the store moving to new premises on our High Street however, they now seem to use such a huge amount of it, you can smell it over the other side of the road. I've only been in once since they moved and paid the price.

They are not the only ones. More recently, a similar scent is now being used by the Ivy Asia restaurant chain, Magnet Kitchens and Harbour Hotels. All of which are in our town centre. I didn't discover this from going inside, but from walking past on the street.

I wrote to the Ivy Asia team earlier in the summer as I was having drinks with friends outside a bar over the road from the restaurant. I could feel I was reacting before the evening was out and by the following lunchtime, I was in the middle of a full-on flare-up caused by exposure to the Ivy's scent. My eyes were swollen and blistered, taking days to calm down with the help of antihistamines and Tacrolimus immunosuppressant ointment.

They called me pretty quickly to discuss. A very nice chap told me it was meant to just be in the toilets, it was 'all natural' and he said he would see what they could do. I explained the problem is that 'all natural' unfortunately means very little, as we're not meant to be exposed to the high concentration of essential oils used in any of these fragrances and many people have reactions to natural ingredients. I also let him know that the scent is not confined to just the toilets, because the air-conditioning/ventilation system draws it through the external condenser units and out on to the street.

And this is the problem. Whereas those of us with sensitivities can avoid going in to the places we know use this so-called scent marketing, it is much harder to navigate the outside world, with condenser units being positioned in odd places and wind direction affecting the spread of the scent too.

I recently joined some forums on social media to see if anyone was having the same issues as I am. I discovered many thousands of us across all social media platforms are seeking answers and sharing experiences. It seems that in the US, it is even more prolific than here, with everything from entire shopping malls to residential apartment blocks and doctors' surgeries using fragrance diffusers. I fear that as we tend to follow suit with such trends, it's only a matter of time before more and more businesses in the UK use these marketing methods, which they think are enticing customers to enter and spend, but in reality are causing problems for some 32% of the population (Steinemann, A. International prevalence of fragrance sensitivity, 2019).

That is almost a third of adults. And I ask myself; Is this a good business stragegy? If one person can't go to the Ivy Asia for example, the odds are that could mean that up to five or so other people would also be going somewhere else to dine. That is potentially a huge loss of revenue.

There are now areas of the US that have banned use of fragrance in public spaces and in the workplace, but the conversations on social media are evidence that much more needs to be done. I'm not sure businesses will listen simply to the argument that it causes skin and respiratory issues. The best approach will probably be to point out the financial impact of alienating such a large group of potential customers and their families and friends. And that is what I intend to do. Armed with the research papers showing the clear clinical evidence, I will try my best to convince them on the financial benefits of going fragrance-free.

Let's see what happens!