Scent Marketing Takeaways:
- Scent drives brand recall better than visuals or sound by tapping directly into memory and emotion, making it a powerful tool for experience-driven businesses.
- Signature fragrances can become profitable product lines, with hotels and retail brands seeing 150%+ ROI from candles and room sprays.
- Successful scent marketing starts with strategy, not personal taste, aligning fragrance with brand values, story, and spatial experience is key to impact.
As luxury brands compete to deliver emotionally resonant experiences, one sense is proving to be an especially powerful asset: scent.
Participants exposed to a subtle rose scent during learning, sleep, and testing scored 8.5% higher on memory tests than those without scent cues, according to a 2023 study published in Scientific Reports.
The findings underscore a scent’s unique ability to enhance memory and forge emotional connections, two pillars of effective brand experiences.
Alan van Roemburg, CEO of Air Aroma, has spent over two decades helping global names like Fairmont Hotels, Aston Martin, and Louis Vuitton build signature scents that do more than smell good.
In my interview with Alan, he shares five strategic insights every marketing leader should act on today and what’s at stake if they don’t.
Who is Alan van Roemburg?
Alan van Roemburg is the CEO of Air Aroma, the world’s leading scent marketing agency. Based in Melbourne and operating globally, Air Aroma has helped iconic luxury brands like Fairmont, Cathay Pacific, and Aston Martin craft signature scents that reflect their identity, engage customers, and generate new revenue through custom products. The company began in a garage in the early 2000s and now serves clients across hospitality, retail, and aviation.
- Use fragrance to create emotional brand memories
- Transform your signature scent into a revenue stream
- Prioritize brand identity over personal preference
- Let brand values guide the scent design
- Use scent to tell a place-based brand story
1. Use Scent to Make Brand Moments Stick
Scent is now part of early brand planning, not just a finishing detail.
First impressions form quickly when people enter a hotel, retail store, or showroom, and scent plays a subtle yet powerful role in shaping how those spaces are felt and remembered.
Unlike visual or auditory branding, a signature scent connects directly to the emotional and memory centers of the brain.
That’s what makes it so effective at reinforcing identity and creating moments people hold on to.
“Utilizing our senses reaffirms our aliveness and connectedness to the world,” Alan says.
“I think people are hungry to experience something special and memorable, so sensory marketing brings in this fascinating element that goes beyond a billboard or banner ad.”
For brands focused on experience and emotional connection, scent is a tool that adds depth, not decoration.
2. Turn Signature Scents Into a Revenue Stream
A well-designed fragrance does more than enhance the environment. It can:
- Drive sales
- Increase loyalty
- Create a lasting connection that extends beyond the physical space
Custom fragrance products like candles, room sprays, and diffusers have become a major opportunity for brands to turn ambient scent into an owned product line.
“A great way to measure the impact of a signature scent is through custom products — this provides a clear ROI and sales from these products more than pay for the ambient scenting,” says Alan.
The results back it up:
- One retail client earned $363,000 in profit from scented candles
- A hotel saw a 150% ROI on candles within just four months
- Guests frequently ask how to buy the signature scent, a sign of emotional connection
For brands that invest in a signature fragrance, productizing it is a natural next step.
It transforms a fleeting sensory moment into something people can take home and keep associating with your brand.
3. Design for the Brand, Not Individual Taste
Scent marketing isn’t the same as choosing a personal fragrance. Unfortunately, that’s where many brand teams get stuck.
What works for a hotel, retail space, or showroom often has little to do with what someone would wear as perfume.
The real goal is to design a fragrance that expresses the brand’s identity, not a creative director’s preference.
“We have to remind them it’s not something they’d choose to wear but rather close your eyes and envision it in the space, imagining how it feels,” Alan says.
Missteps happen when scent is treated as a decorative element instead of a strategy. Just like in music or lighting, a mismatch can throw off the entire experience.
“If your intent is just to make something smell nice, there can be missteps there,” he explains.
“It’s no different than if you walk into a sleek high-end retail store with smooth clean textures and they’re playing death metal.”
Brands that succeed with scent marketing are the ones that treat it like any other part of their identity system: expressive, intentional, and built to resonate.
4. Let Your Brand Values Shape the Fragrance
A signature scent should reflect more than aesthetics. It should express what the brand wants to represent.
For Fairmont Hotels, that meant connecting luxury with sustainability.
“We worked on the two signature scents, Fairmont Classic Black and Fairmont Iconic White, for nearly two years,” Alan says.
“It was a long-term project that required finesse and dedication, as we created the world’s first certified sustainable fragrance tailored for ambient scenting within the hotel industry.”
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The scents were developed using ethically sourced ingredients like vanilla from Madagascar and patchouli from Indonesia, selected for their connection to Fairmont’s environmental values.
That attention to detail didn’t stop with diffusion.
Air Aroma also helped develop custom Fairmont candles using eco-friendly wax, wood wicks, and ceramic vessels engraved with the hotel’s branding, giving guests a way to bring the experience home.
The result: a fragrance program that’s not only memorable, but consistent with the brand’s tone, values, and business goals — and one that continues to generate ROI through product sales.
5. Use Scent to Tell a Brand’s Origin Story
For R.M. Williams, the goal wasn’t just to scent a store. It was to bottle the spirit of the Australian outback.
“Their original customer were Australian cowboys who worked in the Outback, in this rugged, arid environment with rich red hues,” Alan shares.
“We wanted to celebrate the original customer and outback Australia and I think we did a great job translating that into scent.”
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The Air Aroma team immersed themselves in the brand’s retail environments and designed scents that reflected that landscape.
The final signature scent, a blend of sage, hay, and tobacco leaves, was “arid yet vivid,” evoking a raw, grounded atmosphere that felt true to the company’s heritage while still refined enough for modern retail.
The scent was so well received it evolved into a full product line of candles, room sprays, and diffusers, extending the in-store moment into customers’ homes.
This case shows that signature scents are narrative and help brands root their physical spaces in story and meaning, especially when culture or place is central to the identity.
Final Thought: Scent Is a Brand Asset, Treat It Like One
For decades, brands have invested in logos, typography, and music to express who they are.
Today, scent is joining that toolkit as a strategic asset with emotional power and measurable impact.
Whether it’s Fairmont reinforcing its sustainability values or R.M. Williams evoking the Australian outback, the most successful fragrance programs do more than scent a space.
They tell a story, spark emotion, and build loyalty.
For brands serious about creating an unforgettable customer experience, scent isn’t a finishing touch.
It’s foundational, and the most memorable part of how a space feels.
