NTT sniffs out sales through aroma-advertising

If the poster of a frosty glass of beer or the food in the window isn’t enough to tempt you into the Kirin City beer hall near Tokyo station, NTT Communications is hoping a computer-controlled aroma of oranges or lemons will do the trick.

On Sunday the company will kick off a two-month trial that will see different aromas wafted through the air in front of the restaurant, which is in an underground shopping mall, to test their effect on sales. The aromas are generated by a computer-controlled device that receives its instructions over the Internet and results from the test could help kick-start a new form of advertising that assaults our sense of smell to push products.

During the test different scents will be tested at different times of day and their effects compared to periods when the aroma-generation equipment is switched off. At lunchtime the smell of oranges and lemons is hoped to have a refreshing effect on people and get them in the mood for lunch while in the evening a woody smell is hoped to be the clincher in getting customers inside.

In previous tests the power of smell on human behavior has been proven.

Earlier this year aromas were tested in a shopping area in Tokyo with orange and lavender scents that are thought to calm shoppers. As a result sales rose 4.8 percent, said Shunichi Hamada, a supervisor with NTT’s net business division, at a Tokyo news conference.

The company itself saw the change a scent can make when it tested the power of vanilla in its own headquarters building lobby. It occasionally places chocolates out for customers and found that when vanilla was wafted through the lobby almost twice as many people took a chocolate to eat.

NTT Communications is working with Air Aroma Co. on the trials. The company has created an aroma diffuser than can hold three scents. It connects to a small PC that receives instructions over the Internet and is capable of controlling the diffuser and an accompanying digital signboard that will also hawk products.

The scent will permeate an area around 5 meters from the diffuser when it is in operation, said Hamada.

Right now there are about 80 scents that can be chosen, most based on the same essential oils that are popular in aromatherapy. At present it remains difficult to produce scents like sausage that might be more normally associated with a beer hall.

The trials are part of NTT’s “Kaori Tsushin” system. Last year the system was used to inject scents into two movie theaters, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka, to heighten the feelings of joy, love, and sadness during a movie.