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Projects/Deutsche Telekom
PrototypeDigital Scent

Smell o Vision: a television you can smell

Client
Deutsche Telekom
Format
Prototype · trade fair concept
Date
February 2023
Technology
Digital scent · Aromajoin

The Project

Eine Kochshow
zum Riechen.

Telekom wanted to promote its MagentaTV cooking show at a trade fair. The obvious solution: a screen with the trailer. Our idea: a television that smells along – when prawns hit the pan on screen, the stand smells of prawns.

We had scouted the technology for it shortly before at CES 2023, where digital scent featured as one of the trends in the CTA presentation. We compared four providers – Aromajoin, Hapticsol, OVR and Olorama – and chose Aromajoin's Aroma Shooter: the only one able to switch scents fast enough to follow a video edit.

In the kick-off workshop with Telekom the concept was sharpened and the technology tested live: scenes from the show with matching scents – from grilled food through sea air to fresh asparagus.

The Challenge.

What does a video cut smell like at exactly the right second?

Scent marketing has been around a long time – a fragrance that hangs permanently in a room. A scent television is something else: the smell has to follow the picture, scene by scene, and disappear again at the cut.

That is exactly where most systems fail. The Aroma Shooter manages the switch between scents in 0.1 seconds – which makes it possible to score a 30 to 90 second cut of the cooking show scene by scene. Just with scents instead of music.

The second question: which scents at all? From 86 available scent cartridges, the selection for the show was curated – and tested directly by nose in the workshop.

The payoff

What stuck
in the end.

Over 70 per cent of our memories and emotions are triggered through smell – that is how it was put in the CES 2023 trend presentation. Anyone communicating through the nose at a trade fair will not be forgotten.

In the pre-selection, Telekom could decide on something you could actually smell – not on a slide. That the router concept won in the end is not a failure: that is exactly what you build prototypes for, before investing heavily.

From CES through the provider comparison to a working set-up in a few weeks – and digital scent has been part of the FUTURE CANDY toolkit for events, prototypes and TECH FLAT ever since.

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