Targeting consumers communting on North Carolina’s River Highway in the town of Moorseville, the Bloom grocery store chain recently tried its hand at tempting potential customers to stop in with the scent of grilled meat—wafting from a billboard along the roadway.
In the early part of June of this year, the scent of charcoal and black pepper eminanted from the billboard, which featured an image of fork-pierced meat displayed to westbound traffic on the N.C. 150 roadway, from 7–10 AM and 4–7 PM daily, hitting an audience traveling in their cars. The campaign’s use of scent-release timing, in addition to its location, targets potential consumers in a novel way and time, and demonstrates the ability to cut through the clutter of more crowded media to reach potential consumers in an innovative, unexpected way.
Although scented marketing is nothing new, targeting drivers via a billboard with fragrance is a new development, giving rise to ideas about scented displays that reach consumers in other rarely considered locations.
Where could the scent of your brand’s products reach consumers in an unsaturated environment? And what scents—or sounds or visuals—could you optimize to cut through the clutter presented to today’s consumers?
