Questioning about the smell that technology has can refer to a smell between plastic, metal and ‘new’, the latter a fragrance that is even sold in the aerosol market. However, coming up with a fragrance was a task that Motorola decided to undertake in order to make the offline shopping experience relate to online shopping.
“It is important to mention that the fragrance did not arise because of the pandemic, we at the brand were looking for a connection with the consumer beyond the hardware product, because in the end the telephone is an extension of the interaction between the brand and the user. There have been efforts to have new colors for the visual theme, in the textures for the touch, in the ear with the audio that characterizes us, but the taste and the ear is the new challenge to connect”, said Renata Altenfelder, global executive director of Marketing and Brand at Motorola.
The brand joined with the Firmenich company with whom they sought its distinctive aroma.
“The definition of the smell of technology is complicated to do, in fact we were working under three main aromas, which sought to represent diversity, innovation, trust and that it be unique. The project lasted more than a year, it was global and we did tests in India, Europe, the United States and Latin America”, said Altenfelder.
Brand intent is not a new concern. In 2013, Google launched an April Fool’s joke in which it presented with great fanfare Google Nose, a technology that promised the possibility of smelling through the screen and thereby creating experiences.
Although the technology company later admitted that it was a joke, the search to connect all the user’s senses is becoming more relevant for brands.
“We were from the marketing, product development, packaging production plant personnel, engineering, research and design teams who worked together with Firmenich in the search for this aroma. It should be said that the decision was finally made by Motorola users”, the Motorola spokeswoman pointed out.
The fragrance will be available in all Motorola flagships and in the packaging of the new Edge series, in order for consumers to refer to the company’s scent with the products they have presented in recent years.
Is it possible to create olfactory technology?
In the world, emphasis has been placed on the development of biometrics that can be applied to mobile devices, such as facial or fingerprint recognition, but on the subject of olfactory identification, there is still no focus on consumer technology.
The Polytechnic University of Madrid, in collaboration with the European Society for Differential Analysis of Mobility (SEADM), have become pioneers in developing a new biometric identifier: the smell of our hand.
However, it is still far from being an accepted identifier to identify a person in consumption.
