Photograph by Dag Endresen
You say Potato McCain say Bus Stop
Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Aristotle is the first person credited with the traditional classification of the five sense organs in circa 322 BC. I wonder what he would make of McCain Foods recently launched smell based campaign for Ready Made Jacket potatoes and also if they even ate spuds before Jesus was a boy?
Whatever the answers to those cryptic questions one thing is for sure. In the quest for keeping a brand human nothing beats good old ‘smellovision’ to create a talking point around a food based product.
McCains bus shelter adverts which emit the smell of fresh baked jackets to commuters from a tactile larger than life tatty is certainly a clever idea. As humans we all have the need to eat and smell creates a desire for that need.
You can’t help wondering with smell based marketing tactics what they use to recreate a realistic odour? Did they bottle the genuine smell of one of the jackets cooking or was it cooked up in a lab with bottled perfumes to give a synthesised experience.
Whatever the ‘science behind the smell’ McCain have cooked up a winner because I for one feel rather hungry writing this and like the idea of oven cooked spuddy goodness for dinner tonight. Thanks to them I know I could microwave one in five minutes. Lets hope the taste lives up to the hype – looking at the excited sniff of their little hoover character below on the TV advert I am uncharacteristically optimistic.