A Bus Bench Never Smelled So Sweet

According to Reuters, the smell of San Francisco’s bus benches just improved dramatically. The California Milk Processor Board started placing cookie-scented ads in area bus stops. The ad campaign hopes the smell of cookies increases the craving for milk in anyone waiting at the bus stop. I don’t know about you, but when I smell cookies, it makes me crave more cookies, not milk. Also, where do you buy milk when you are waiting at a bus stop? I wonder if cookie makers everywhere are busy making milk scented ads to drive up cookie sales. Would the milk scent get ripe on a hot day though? Why not place a milk ad bus stop next to the cookie-scented bus stop so everyone wins? At least waiting for a bus in San Francisco will be more pleasant now with the sweet scent of fresh baked cookies wafting through the air. Although to be fair, I can’t remember the last time I waited for a bus in San Francisco or any city for that matter, so I probably should not speak about the pleasantries of bus stop waiting.

I don’t think using scents to improve sales is anything new. They’ve been spraying unsuspecting people near the cosmetic and fragrance counters at malls everywhere for years. Disneyland has long been suspected of releasing sweet and sugary scents from its candy shops onto Main Street for as long as I can remember. In fact, my office just inserted pine smell into the restroom’s automatic air freshener machines like they do every holiday season. It’s a lot better than the ‘old man who ate too much cabbage’ scent that permeates our restroom the remainder of the year. The power of smell is very strong and can make quite an impression. Why just yesterday I smelled this guy in line next to me that, well, smelled rather garlicky. Only I don’t think it was garlic.

Now that the advertising industry has expanded to the wide world of smell, I can think of so many exciting pairings. Imagine being able to boost sales because someone can smell your product or smell something that makes them crave your product. The possibilities are endless. How great would it be driving by coffee scented billboards on the freeway while driving into work each morning? Maybe we’d all be a little peppier when we get into the office each day.

Restaurants like Red Lobster could start placing ads that smelled like wharves or piers that would hopefully make people crave seafood. The liver and onions industry (there is one, right?) could create ads scented like, well, I guess anything other than liver and onions to help drive up their sales. Obviously any ad scented like chocolate would be wildly successful, as would any ad that smelled like good BBQ. The Duraflame company could begin placing billboards in the fall that smelled like burning wood to help remind everyone of how much they need to light a fake wax and saw dust molded log in their fireplace when they get home. If the California Milk Processor Board’s new ad campaign is successful, the world around us could become not only one big billboard, but also a cornucopia of nasal delights.

How fun it would be to stand on one corner and smell an ad for one food type and then stand on another corner and smell something entirely different but equally tasty. Actually, I take that back. Sea World likes to smoke meat in big fire pits outside of two of their restaurants, which smells great, but when the wind shifts and the smoked meat smell mixes with the smell of the aquatic mammals or their raw fish, it tends to be a little nauseating. The same goes for those days at the shopping center near work when the smell of the Mexican food restaurant mixes with the scents from the Chinese buffet next door. Those are usually the days when we all end up turning around and walking back to work with a sudden loss of appetite.

Hopefully the advertising council or whoever regulates outside advertising will set some boundaries and scent guidelines. I think we all can agree that no matter how much we like to eat it; none of us wants to smell an advertisement for cheese. Some things are better left to the imagination, but I definitely smell a winner with this new type of advertising.