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I Smell An Ad Campaign

By Ben Levisohn

I Smell An Ad Campaign

Ads are leaping from the screen at some European film theaters. Cinescent, based in the German city of Hanover, has designed a machine that pumps a barely detectable aroma through a movie house’s air conditioning system to accompany on-screen ads. In early tests, a German theater ran two ads for the Nivea Sun lotion line, one accompanied by the faint smell of the product and a phrase—“the Scent of Summer”—splashed across the screen. The aromatic ad, produced for an extra $15,000, boosted consumer recall by 37% and raised ad impact (gauged over a few weeks) by more than 500%, says Cinescent. The company, which is producing scented ads for Nivea and Dove at 25 theaters in Germany and the Netherlands, expects to be in five British theaters by fall. So far, there are no plans to expand to the U.S., where theater owners have been reluctant to introduce artificial scents.