Scent Fantasy

Narrative by William Liu, Posted December 15, 2024

Image courtesy of the author

The CASE FILE series — to which SEMIOVOX has invited our semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — shares stories of things we were amazed and amused to learn, whether or not they proved useful to the client.

I was once tasked with decoding the emotional meanings associated with different perfume scents… through consumer research, alas, not via semiotic methodology. So I decided to guide the consumers to engage with the assignment like a semiotician would.

Meaning in the world of fragrance is elusive — which is an important part of its appeal. In each bottle of perfume lurks a magic power… in the form of an aroma that can transform one’s emotions and state of mind. The perfumer’s art involves an exquisite mixture of scent notes, each of which convey its own message; together, they mean something new. Semioticians love this sort of mystery, one that requires us to untangle a complex web of meanings — to categorize them and show how they relate to one another within an overall context. In the case of perfume, I decided, we needed to understand the following:

A scent uniquely composed of a mixture of fragrance notes (i.e., signs)
A personal memory, scene, or story (level-1 meanings) evoked for the user
Emotions aroused by that memory, scene, or story (level-2 meanings)

How to elicit these meanings and signs from the target consumers? I asked them to sniff the scent, then close their eyes, relax and breathe steadily. What fragrance notes did they detect in the scent, I asked? And: Into what sort of memory, scene, or story did this scent transport them? In a process that took 20 to 30 minutes per scent, the interviewees would describe to me vivid details of the scent’s imaginary ambience and story line.

For example:

Fragrance notes:

“sweet-sour fruity” top-middle note
“bitter-warm woody & leather & tobacco” base notes

Evoked by these notes:

The top-middle note evoked a “sweet” life with the lover and a “sour” breakup
The base notes evoked an upscale bar, with a piano and old photos

Story line prompted by these evocations

“A charming if introverted man, 35 years old, is living with the woman he loves. When they’re forced to break up, because of social conventions, they promise never to forget one another. The man opens an upscale bar offering top-shelf wine and liquor. Every drink, every song played on the piano, every photo evokes his lost love. The atmosphere is redolent with sweet love and the sourness of its loss. Though the clientele with whom he smokes and drinks enjoy his wry, sincere personality, they’re surprised at times when their own stories make him very emotional. Although he’ll never fall in love again, he’s content to contemplate the love he once knew and enjoy his sophisticated life.”

The “higher-order benefits” that the marketers should associate with this fragrance:

Complex and sophisticated
Refined in an understated way
Alone and distant, yet not unemotional
Appreciating these aspects of one’s personality and experience

Consumers — sophisticated, creative, imaginative consumers — are good semioticians!

I should also note that semiosis is happening from multiple “angles” when it comes to fragrance:

The perfumer is a scent-semiotician, telling a story through their complex creations. But of course, their story — in the case of the scent described above, it was a story about African wilderness! — might not be “translated” from out of their own context.
The consumer tells themself a story, extrapolating meaning from what they smell.
The semiotician, in this scenario, must act as a “bridge” between perfumer and consumer — making sense and justifying the magical power of an elusive fragrance.

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