A nice scent is not enough.

Bonjour {{ first_name }},

After more than twenty years working with scent, I have become increasingly interested in a question that has very little to do with whether a fragrance is beautiful.

 What does it actually do?

I ask this because businesses can spend considerable time, money and creative energy developing fragrance. A skincare product can smell exquisite. A hotel can diffuse something guests adore. A wellness experience can be surrounded by beautiful aromatic materials. And yet none of those things necessarily means the scent is creating value.

That distinction matters more than it might appear.

Imagine that I remove the scent from your product, your space or your customer experience tomorrow. What changes? Would your customer notice? Would the experience become less distinctive? Would something important about your brand disappear? Or would you simply replace it with another equally pleasant fragrance and carry on?

If almost nothing changes, you may have a scent. But you probably don’t have an olfactive asset.

This is one of the distinctions I wish more businesses made before they begin talking about signature scents, fragrance trends or which notes are currently popular.

Beauty is not the same as relevance. Preference is not the same as recognition. And simply because customers say they like a fragrance does not mean that fragrance is doing anything particularly valuable for the business.

I see scent differently. Before asking what something should smell like, I want to know what the scent is there to accomplish.

Perhaps it needs to make a product more pleasurable to use and therefore support adoption. Perhaps it needs to reinforce a very particular brand territory. Perhaps it should create recognition across different touchpoints. Perhaps it needs to make an experience more emotionally distinctive, or give somebody one more reason to remember and return to it.

Those are very different briefs from “we need something that smells beautiful.”

There is a simple exercise you can do with almost any scented product, brand or experience. Ask yourself three questions: What is this scent intended to change? What would we genuinely lose if we removed it? And does what it creates belong specifically to us, or could one of our competitors use essentially the same olfactory idea tomorrow?

The answers can be surprisingly uncomfortable.

They can also reveal value that is already sitting inside a business and hasn’t yet been recognized.

This is something I have become almost obsessed with over the years. We tend to think innovation means adding something new, but sometimes the more interesting commercial opportunity is to identify what already exists inside a brand and ask whether it could be made more deliberate, distinctive and valuable.

And scent is particularly interesting in this respect because it is so often treated as decoration. It arrives late in the conversation. The product exists, the packaging exists, the positioning exists, and then somebody asks what it should smell like.

I believe that is often the wrong moment to start thinking strategically about scent.

The question isn’t necessarily “Should we create a signature fragrance?” either. Sometimes the answer should be no. The better question is whether there is a sensory opportunity inside the brand that could strengthen the way people experience it, recognize it, choose it or return to it.

That is a business question before it is a fragrance question.

It is also one of the reasons I created Brand Made Unforgettable™ Executive Masterclass.

It isn’t a perfumery course, and it isn’t a programme designed to convince every business that it needs a signature scent. It is where I take founders and decision-makers through the strategic work that comes before that decision: examining the brand through a sensory lens, identifying hidden assets and gaps, and understanding where scent could create meaningful differentiation, memorability and customer value.

Because after twenty years in this industry, I am far less interested in helping businesses simply add scent.

I am interested in helping them understand when scent can become an asset.

The Brand Made Unforgettable™ Executive Masterclass is €990. If today’s note has made you look at your own brand, product or customer experience a little differently, you can explore the complete Masterclass here.

[ EXPLORE BRAND MADE UNFORGETTABLE™ — €990 ]

Aromatically yours,
Françoise

P.S. I am curious about something. Think of a beautifully scented product, hotel, store or experience you have encountered. Could you immediately tell me which brand the scent belonged to? Hit reply and tell me. I have a feeling the answers may be rather interesting.

And if someone came to mind while you were reading this, forward it to them. These private notes are where I will be sharing the mechanisms, observations and commercial thinking behind my work with scent twice a month—things I don’t necessarily explore in the same depth publicly.