Pepper Steak Scented Billboard from Todd Turner on Vimeo.
It seems to me that marketers go a bit far here for the latest, cutest gimmick. The consumer reporter in this news clip says "with all the advertising around you want to be able to jump out and grab the consumer's attention," and they've done it by pumping the smell of grilling steak out over the highway. The thing is, though, smell is an intimate sense that connects us to memory and emotion in powerful ways. As Marcel Proust writes, "The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls ready to remind us..."
I don't like the idea of marketers poking around in my subconscious. I know they do it all the time, and I know that they push my buttons to get me to buy stuff--and to feel crappy about myself, much of the time (so that I'll buy more stuff). But somehow using smell crosses a line for me, and feels just too invasive. Hands off my nose.
(I first came across this story on the consumerist, here: http://consumerist.com/2010/06/new-billboard-smells-like-steak-sort-of.html)
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