A Bit of Optimism - The Smell of Memory with scent designer Dawn Goldworm

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Our sense of smell has the deepest tie to emotion and memory. But it's also the most overlooked. In business, that's a giant missed opportunity.Dawn Goldworm knows how to use scent to evoke emotion and create loyalty. From Lady Gaga to Ferrari to books, Dawn designs signature fragrances that allow customers to connect with brands in a more meaningful way. A perfumer turned entrepreneur, her company 12.29 works with some of the biggest names in hospitality, fashion, automotive, and beyond.Many years ago, Dawn helped me create the Scent of Optimism. I was excited to talk with her about what it takes to compose a new smell from scratch and why smell has the unique ability to make a brand instantly memorable.This...is A Bit of Optimism.To learn more about Dawn and her work, check out:12.29 

When I say the word brand, what comes to mind? Bright colors? A cute mascot? A logo? Maybe a jingle? What you probably don't think of is scent. And scent happens to be Dawn Goldworm's favorite subject. Dawn is the founder and CEO of 1229, a company that helps businesses create unique, signature scents. Scents that build memories. She works with some of the biggest names in fashion, automotive, sports apparel, hospitality,

even a theme park or two, to craft fragrances that allow customers to experience the brand in a deeper, more meaningful way. And as you'll hear, there's a lot more to composing a scent from scratch than you think. This is a bit of optimism. Dawn, thanks for joining me on the old podcast. It's fun to have you on because I think what you do is so fun and so special. Just to give people a little context for how I know you and how we met, you and I, by sheer coincidence, were seated at the same table at some event

a lot of years ago. And I had heard your presentation that day about using scent for branding. And I thought your presentation was amazing. Thank you. And by sheer coincidence, we were seated next to each other at the dinner. And I leaned over to you and I said,

could you scent a book? Is that possible? And you went, yes, that's possible. And I said, has it ever been done before? And you said, no, I don't think so. I said, I would like to scent a book. And this became the beginning of a partnership and friendship of the two of us.

And for those of you who have ever read my book, Together is Better, spoiler alert, because we've always kept it a secret. So it's a little surprise for people who buy it, but the book is scented. And you developed that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism. Yes, it is the smell of you. The smell of me, the smell of my personality.

So first of all, let's go back down memory lane. You are what is called a nose, meaning you develop scents for a living. And you have been doing this for how long? I started in my early 20s in perfumery school. A long time. Like a quarter of a century. Okay. Ouch.

So this I assume for most people who are noses, perfume is the direction you generally go in. Yes, you can go into fine fragrance, which is perfume for skin. You can go into ancillaries like body wash, shampoo, etc. You can go into home care, laundry detergent. You can also become a flavorist and develop flavors, which is the same industry. Most people don't know that. Interesting. The taste of Coca-Cola, gin and yogurt, everything that we put into our mouth is flavored by the same people that create fragrance.

But in general, the perfumery school that I went to, you would become a fine fragrance perfumer for skin. Okay, so perfumes that you buy. Traditional. Traditional perfume. Then what is the path? Because you worked at the highest levels. I mean, you were working perfumes for names that we know. I worked for Cody for almost 10 years and I did everything from Lady Gaga to Adidas to the Beckhams. Most of the mass market fragrances in the United States and a lot in the rest of the world. Sure. So if you ever wore Lady Gaga's perfume, you were the one who developed that. I did. Which is kind of cool. That's very cool actually. You developed the smell of Lady Gaga. Sure. Okay. So how do you go from what I would call a fairly traditional,

successful career as a nose in a perfume direction to really pioneering, because you are a pioneer in this space, really pioneering, leaving perfume to make sense for brands? Like, how did that even happen? I'll be honest with you, in all the years I've known you, I actually have no idea how that, you went from that to the other thing. You know, when I had my nose tested, I was finishing up graduate school in London. I was an art history major, and then I did a master's in art business. I thought I was going to be in the art world. And it didn't turn out that way. And I interned at Avon when I was young.

And then someone from Avon called me and said, hey, we have a spot. Do you want to work for us? And I wasn't sure. But I came back to New York and she sent me into a perfumery school and I had my nose tested. I had no idea that I had this innate ability, which is, by the way, like any ability, 5%. And then it's 95% blood, sweat and tears after to learn how to use it. And I fell in love with it. I fell so deeply in love with it that when I started developing fragrance for skin, I was like, there has to be more. It has to be more than just applying it to skin, and so I went back to graduate school at NYU in the evenings while I was in perfumery school in the morning, working at Cody at this point during the day, and I started looking into the psychology behind scent, the sociology around scent, behavioral aspects behind scent, anything that I could tap into, consumer identities, studies, anything I

could find. And then I made it into a business case. I was like, what if brands could apply scent and have that same emotional bond that we do and we apply it to our skin or to our babies or to our house? And this is how it was born. And I think people don't realize that the sense most closely connected to memory is smell. Oh, yeah. So if you think about how you process the other senses, so if you think about your sense of sight, your sense of touch, your sense of taste,

your sense of hearing, once you get that input, it has to go through many neural pathways to get to the place in the brain that comprehends what it actually just heard or felt or saw your nose odor molecules kind of float around the outside of your nose they go up your nose and at the top of your nose is the only place that your brain is exposed to air and so the odor molecules go right up to your limbic system it's a super highway no stop and go go, no collecting $200. There's nothing else that happens. And then once it gets to your limbic system,

the only other two things that happen there are emotion and memory. And so every time you smell something from the time you're born, and actually a little bit before you're born, to 10 years old, every time you smell something, you have a feeling about it. They're both novel experiences you're having and they become linked together and forever married floating in your olfactory memory which becomes the largest and most acute part of your memory so later in life every time you smell something you're immediately brought back to that first moment you

smelt it and more importantly that first feeling and I often say I'm not creating a scent I'm creating an emotional resonance for you. And it's so true, right? It's like, I mean, I go into a space and it smells like my grandparents' house smelled, which was a pretty unique smell. My grandfather worked, you know, as an engineer. And so the smell of sort of like industrial lubricant, like was on him at all times and they were antiques dealers. So there was like a mustiness and an old house, an old Victorian house. And that all came together to be the smell of grandma and grandpa's house, which wasn't a bad smell. It was a beautiful smell and, but quite unique. So true. When you talk about this, that's so fascinating. And it creates a loyalty. So when you apply it as a business case to a brand, you can help create that emotional bond that the brand is trying to create through

all the other touch points that you mentioned. And that's what creates the loyalty. That's so interesting. So if I have a good experience in a store that you have scented, then I can be reminded of that experience somewhere else if I smell similar notes somewhere else. And if you buy whatever product the store is selling and it's scented, when you're at home, all you're going to think about is returning to that store and buying more is that manipulative so this is the way that smell works so it's it's conditioned right so depending on your culture your generation and your living environment like i was saying you smell different ingredients different fragrances

and they're linked to different emotional experiences you're having so the first time your mother is holding you you feel safe hopefully you feel loved hopefully and you're smelling her breast milk you're smelling maybe some kind of baby product which is cultural and it changes on different places in the world so lavender isn't a thing for all cultures to make them feel safe and tired as people think it is spray lavender on your pillow that won't work for the entire east of the world no No kidding. Yeah. It only works for certain parts of Europe, certain parts of the United States and some of South America. Only because when we were babies, somebody sprayed lavender. No, it's because there's lavender in baby products. There's lavender in baby products. And it's a cultural phenomenon. Like in the South of France,

they use orange blossom. They don't use it at all in Asia. So orange blossom makes somebody feel relaxed. So it's all based on that. So when you're running on the beach as a kid, hopefully your parents put sunblock on you, right? You're feeling fun for the first time. You're feeling free. That smell of whatever that sunblock was, Hawaiian tropic, let's say, or coconut. But again, it's cultural. So in Europe, they use a different flower. They don't use coconut and pineapple like we use here. They will use something else, a narrowly, for instance. And so that would make people feel like the beach there versus here, totally different.

Wow. And this is all based on generation as well. So products have changed every 10 years. And with the globalization of product, it's gotten a lot mixed up. For example, for example. It's very layered. This is very interesting.

So I understand the cultural element. Tell me something where a smell for one generation is no longer relevant for a different generation. Well, with the invention of plastic. So toys used to be made out of wood. Right. So anyone that was born, let's say, up to definitely in the 1940s, post-1940s when you started seeing plastic,

toys started to be made out of plastic. And so when people would smell wood, they would think of their childhood. Not anymore. Not anymore. Tell me another one. This is so good. CO2 off gases. My favorite topic. Go on. So the way that sneakers are made, everyone thinks that they're smelling leather, they're smelling rubber, they're smelling adhesives is mostly what they're smelling. And they're smelling the breakdown of all these ingredients once they're made and they're heated up and put in a box. And so when you open a new box of sneakers, a lot of what you're smelling is these off gases and people love the smell because they feel like it's newness and luxury. And I put it in so many fragrances. So wait a minute, I have to say this again. So it's the leather, the rubber and the

glue. It's the viatol molecules that break down once they're all put together. What's a viatol molecule? Molecules that disperse. They don't stay inside of a product. They float around so you can smell them. Okay. So the reason I can smell leather when I'm not right up close to it. Because there's a whole bunch of viatol molecules coming off of it. But you know, leather doesn't actually smell like leather. What? Well, it's the skin of an animal. It smells like a dead animal. We treat it to smell like leather. We, what? So then why does all leather smell like leather?

Have you ever smelled a cow? Yeah, they don't smell good. That's where leather comes from. Did they design the smell of leather? Like did leather smell the same 200 years ago as it smells now? Yes and no. So Catherine de' Medici was the first one

to create commercial perfume in Florence. She came through Grasse, which is the historical home of perfume, because Grasse was the center of leather. And they would scent saddles and they would scent gloves in Grasse. You know, no one wanted to smell like a dead animal on top of another animal, which would have been very strange. And then she came to Paris and then the center of perfume, you know, around the, let's say, latter 1800s began the 1900s, Paris became the commercial center of perfume. And so all leather smelled the same because it was all done in the same place, essentially. And is that the smell today? I actually don't know the answer to that, but I would assume it's close, but probably not the same. So what do we add to make the smell of leather? This is so to me so there's no ingredient that smells like leather it's an accord essentially so it's these little tiny formulas we make up to make something smell like something

so i've never actually broken down the accord of leather aha i like it i've given you a challenge you have now i feel like i'm gonna go back so this is the thing that i like just to go off and I need to come back to this. But before I do, as you talk about a chord, it's the same as a chord in music. Yes, exactly. It's exactly the same thing. So we have notes and then we have chords. So we have notes, which would be our ingredients, which are raw materials that could be natural

or we call them molecules, which are synthetically made by scientists. And then we make them into a chords, which are a small amount of notes. It could be anywhere between two and, I don't know, seven. Because I love the way you think about, you talk about scent. You say color, there's only three primary colors. That's it. In music, there's only seven notes. That's it.

And it's how Beethoven organizes and combines those notes that make a symphony. It's how Van Gogh organizes and mixes those three primary colors that you get the magic of a Van Gogh. And there's only a finite number of notes for scent. And it's how you combine them into chords or accords and use them that makes things flowery, magical, vanilla-y, whatever. Absolutely. There was, when I started training, there was about 4,500 that we had, there was a lot about 4,500 that we had. There was a lot. 4,500, which is much more than three primary colors or seven notes. Now there's about 1,500. A lot of them have been taken off the palette for a variety of reasons.

The fragrance industry by nature is sustainable. And so we take a lot of things from the earth. And we're very careful with how much we take from the earth. We constantly think about how we can regenerate. It's unlike food where they can make mass amounts of food and kind of ruin the soil. So there's no nutrients or smell or taste in food. We can't do that. Our flour needs to smell the same year over year or as close to it as we can make it. And so the soil has to stay very nutrient rich and dense so that we can produce the

ingredients that we need. So we have about 1,500 that we use today. Let's go back to that box of sneakers. So there's scent coming off of the artificial leather smell, which is the smell of leather for all leather. There's the scent coming off of the rubber. There's the scent coming off of the glue in a hot box, in a truck, on a ship. It's been sitting in the cardboard. And the cardboard smell. And the cardboard smell as well. It's all been sitting in there. And if there's any plastic on the shoelaces, remember?

Yeah, all of that. So it's all sitting in there and being focused and condensed because it's in a box, not with no ability to escape. And then you open it and we're hit with that combination because new sneaker smell

is a unique and specific smell. You know, when I worked with Nike, they wanted the smell of Air Force One. Okay. They didn't want Air Max. They didn't want Jordans. They wanted the smell of Air Force One specifically, which smells different than the other two. Because of the amount of leather, the glue, all the combination of the materials. That is so brilliant because the magic of getting this new thing and being hit by it,

as you said, it's not innate. It's cultural where we then learn that that smell is the magic of getting this new thing and being hit by it as you said it's not innate it's cultural where we then learn that that smell is the magic of a new pair of sneakers which means you can recreate artificially and you can pump it into a store did you do that for Nike what is that I did do that for now so tell me what did you do so what how did Nike use how does Nike use smell so artificially produced like the way way you do it, not just stuff in a box. I have to say today, we don't work with Nike, but we did for years. This is pre-COVID. So Nike was an incredible challenge for me.

Talk about a challenge. And I love a good challenge. Nike was, still is, one of the biggest brands in the world. And so when I do what I did for you, as you know, I look very much at the target market. Who are you talking to? With Nike, their target market is enormous. But at the time when they designed everything, it was designed for a 17-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy. But still all over the world.

So we talk about cultural conditioning, China, Brazil, Germany, New York, the entire world. How do you do that? And so when I was looking at this, I was like, okay, but Nike's emotion, as everyone knows, is inspiration. And so I was like, okay, what inspires these 17 year old girls and 19 year old boys all over the world? And so I worked with Nike for about two years and I did a bunch of Nike experiences. Nike has its own soccer pitches. They have their own basketball courts. They have, I designed a pair of shoes with one of their big shoe designers. Like I did so many things. And what I realized it's the smell of sport. It's the feeling of about to play a sport

that is the inspiration. And so we recreated the smell of a soccer cleat in dirt. We have a dirt molecule, a grass molecule, and the smell of the the shoe which is a mixture of metal and leather and sweat we recreated the smell of a basketball as it gets oily from your hand we recreated the sound of a pair of sneakers when you skid on a basketball court the linoleum and the rubber heat up and create a very fascinating smell that everyone knows so when the squeak happens a smell happens because it warms up and it releases off gases. And those vital molecules have a very specific smell. Yes, yes, yes. And you can smell it when you're at a basketball game. We recreated the smell of when you're at the gym and you're sweating and your sweat mixes with that rubber on the gym equipment. Sure. And then we took the smell of a pair of Air Force One when you open the box. And then we add a little bit of magic, which we don't talk about.

And that was the smell of Nike. And what is fascinating about it. We took all of those smells. And put them together. They're all accords. They're all accords. And we put them together. I hate to say it, and I know this is a naive thing to say,

but if I took my favorite phrase from a police song and my favorite phrase from a Beatles song and my favorite phrase or chord from a Beethoven symphony and put them all together, what I'll get is noise. So how is all of these things, the cleats, the oily basketball, the smell, how is that not a nasal mess? Have you ever seen a Monet? Yeah. How many colors are in a Monet?

Fair point. Same thing. If you know how to layer sound, if you know how to layer color and texture and aesthetic, you do the same thing with smell. There are anywhere between three and 200 plus ingredients in a perfume. These are the shortest formulas pretty much in the industry. I don't like to make complex formulas, but there are chords. There are little chords that all go together and together they make a symphony.

So where would I smell the smell of Nike? Because I'm dying to smell the smell. They used it in all the Nike labs and all the private member spaces. We did send shopping bags at one point and I think shoelaces. But what's fascinating about Nike is we still show it today when we're working with a new client or just hanging out with someone that wants to smell. I want to smell. And they smell it and I don't tell them what it is. And they say, sneakers. This is Nike. They don't say Puma. They don't say Adidas. They don't say them what it is and they say sneakers grass this is nike they don't say puma they don't say adidas they don't say reebok they don't say any other sneaker brand they just say nike which

is fascinating and it's the air force one piece and i used to say to people they're like oh i love the smell of the nike store i'm like what do you think basketballs are just like giving off scent i mean yes of course there's like vital molecules around basketballs, but not enough that you would have a scent experience in a store. So interesting. Are there scents, are there particular scents

that are universally around the world liked and universally around the world disliked? Yes. There's one for each. Only one? Only one. So there's one smell in the entire world that everybody likes?

Yes. Which is what? Vanilla. It is, it is really good. And you know why? Vanilla is really good. Do you know why it's vanilla? Because it smells like cookies. No. There's a lot of part of the words that don't eat cookies. Vanilla is the chemical sister of an ingredient called vanillin and vanillin occurs in breast milk and if you weren't breastfed and you had formula they reproduce that smell for formula. So whether it's natural breast milk. And if you weren't breastfed and you had formula, they reproduce that smell for formula. So whether it's natural breast milk or formula, you get something that is close to vanilla,

which is why we all love vanilla because it's basically babyhood. It reminds us of being coddled and safety and comfort and joy and cookies and mommy and all the good things. That's so good. You know what the bad smell is? I don't. Do you want to know?

I mean, it's got to be something putrid. Like what? I mean, the most putrid thing I can think of. I mean, like the list of putrid would be like sewage, rutting things, rutting meat, things like that. Well, if you work in a meat factory, it's not going to be a bad smell for you. You're conditioned. If you work in the sewers in India, for instance, there's a whole case of people that do,

cast, excuse me, of people that do. It's their daily lives. Remember, this is all conditioning. So there's one smell that everyone has to have the same visceral reaction to. Which is? The smell of a decaying body. The smell of a decaying body?

Body, human. Oh, human. And a human decaying body smells different than of a decaying body. Body. Human. Human. And a human decaying body smells different than a dead cow? Yes. I guess that makes sense. Well, we eat dead cow, don't we? But I get it because the things that make up a cow are different than the things that make up a person. Wow.

So that is a universally people love vanilla and hate the smell of a dead human body. And so the Defense Department trains people against the smell of a decaying body so they don't freak out once they go into war or into battle. Because it's so horrible. Because it's so bad. And they can't have them all of a sudden, all of the Army or the Navy or the SEALs or whoever it is, starting to have this visceral action and getting sick.

They need to just go right through it. And so they get trained olfactively. They also use it as a weapon of war. They just spray it. And make people feel sick. Disoriented because you get disoriented. You have a really visceral reaction to it. You don't know what to do because you want to get as far away as possible.

I mean, we used stink bombs when we were kids. Not me, of course, but I was around them. Of course you didn't. No, I actually was a goody-goody. That actually is not an exact, that's actually not sarcasm, actually. But but i was around them of course you didn't um no i actually was a goody goody that actually is not an exact that's actually not sarcasm actually but i have been around them and uh and it's it's rotten eggs you know that's the traditional child stink bomb is rotten eggs and it's gross well and it makes you run in the opposite direction because it smells gross but in in greece there's whole islands of greece that smell sulfuric and they don't think anything of

it and they take the food and they bake it in the sand which it by the way if you've never done it is so good the vegetables come out so delightful but it smells like sulfur no one thinks anything of it I have to tell you a funny smell story so when I was a kid I lived in Hong Kong and I used to collect stickers and I my sister and I had a bunk bed and I had the bottom bed and so the whole inside of my bed was my sticker collection. So I would stick my stickers all inside my bed. And I had some scratch and sniff stickers.

People would give me stickers and I would put them randomly. And somebody gave me skunk scratch and sniff stickers. And the space that I had was like right by where my face was. And I'd never smelled a skunk my whole life because I'd never lived anywhere where skunks existed. There's no skunks in Hong Kong. There's no skunks in Hong Kong? I don't think so. At least they weren't back then. Fascinating. So I'm nine or 10 years old and I've never smelled a skunk my whole life. So I have no idea if this sticker is accurate or not accurate, right? So I, as a child, would scratch the sticker and fall asleep next to the skunk sticker.

as a child would scratch the sticker and fall asleep next to the skunk sticker. And then I moved to America. We moved to America when we were, when I was 10 and living in suburban New Jersey for the first time in my life, I smelled a skunk and everybody else was holding their nose and it was found a putrid. And I thought it was delightful. I bet it was great because it's the smell of childhood. And it was, it was a beautiful memory of me lying in my bunk bed in Hong Kong. And to this day, the smell of a skunk

not only does it not bother me, I find it quite sweet actually. See? And so it's all cultural. It's cultural generational because you had scratch and sniff stickers which don't really exist anymore. So by the way,

the sticker was exactly the smell of a skunk. It was exactly correct. It's the exact smell. Right.unk. It was exactly correct. It's the exact smell. Right. Exactly. That's so funny. And it's also based on your living environment.

So if you live in an urban or a rural living environment. So like the smell of cow, for instance, cow dung. If someone lives in a rural environment, they don't think anything of it. And so if they would go to Central Park, for instance, and they would smell horse dung or horse manure, they're like, ugh, and smell of my childhood. But other people are like, oh my God, what's that smell? Whereas as a New Yorker, the smell of garbage, I find unoffensive,

but the smell of cows, absolutely awful. Yeah, exactly. So it's the same. It's all culturally appropriated, except for those two spells on either end. Except that's so interesting. So if you want to give a gift to somebody who lives in a foreign land, a candle, for example, if you want to say thank you for letting me stay at your house, make sure to buy vanilla. You're more likely to get warm gratitude if you give them vanilla. Yes. As opposed to you guessing, I'm going to give them this lavender one. It's nice and relaxing and they might find it boring. Or they just don't understand the smell.

And that's the interesting thing with smell. So if you don't have an experience with smell the first 10 years of your life, and then you smell it later in life, you'll automatically reject it because you don't have an emotional reaction for it. So you just push it away. No kidding. And so the way we create signature and smell as we, well, the way I say it is we create like this hallway.

The signature is at the end. And I create all these little doors for different cultures and generations and people to walk through so they feel safe because they know that smell. And so they can walk down the hall and get to the actual signature of the scent, which is where the emotion is and where the loyalty is. I want to talk more about the brands you've worked with. I know you can't talk about all of them because you're contractually not allowed to, but let's just say that there's some brands that have some amazing smells in their facilities and stores and places that we go.

And we have magical experiences because of these smells. But you can't talk about it. I get that. What are some of the ones you can talk about? What can I talk about? What are some of the brands you've worked with where you've, like, I know you've worked with cars. What did you do for Ferrari or Porsche? What did we do? Ferrari, we sent to some of their showrooms for some of the new cars that were launched.

Oh, Porsche was interesting. So Porsche, when they launched the Macan, they launched it in the Middle East. I think the first launch was in Dubai and then it was in Qatar, then Abu Dhabi, and then it went to other countries in the Middle East. And so they wanted to create the scent of the Macan for these launches. Why it was so interesting was not, I mean, we'd done that before for other brands, not just car brands, but other brands all over the world. But the Middle East has the most sophisticated, most beautiful, and you could say healthiest in terms of strength of anyone in the world. And so everyone's fully scented. People smoke out their clothing. They oil their hair.

They apply oil to their skin and perfume on top of that to your skin. So they are walking full fragrance. Let's say you have hundreds of men in a room for the launch of a car and we have to scent that room. How are we going to work with all that smell that's already in the air? Versus Americans, who unfortunately a lot of us don't wear perfume, it's much easier to scent an environment here. Because we're not, because we have a little, one little spritz and off we go. Exactly. Well, we're fully scented. I mean, our toothpaste, our shampoo, our body lotion, our laundry detergent, our shoes. I mean, we're fully scented anyway, but we don't give off as

many of those vital molecules. Whereas in the Middle East, they really want you to smell them from a distance. It's their way of recognizing each other too. The women, depending on the country, you know, they wear burqas, but some of them wear their full face covering as well. And the way they can tell who their wife is, is by her perfume. So everyone's fully scented. And so how do you scent an environment that's already fully scented? And so the brief came out of the UK. And I said, well, do you want it to smell English?

Do you want it to smell Western? And I said, that's the only way it's going to stick out in this overly scented environment. And so we made a Western smell for the Middle Yeah. Oh, very good. What went into that smell? What notes? We used a lot of clean wood notes. I remember we used a very clean cedar wood. You can have more of a smoky cedar wood if it's from Morocco, or you can have a cleaner cedar wood if it's from the US, from Virginia. We used a very clean cedar wood, a very clean sandalwood from Australia. We used a lot of citrus notes, really bright, juicy citrus notes, which is very Western in a perfume and in very aromatic European feeling. So in a room that smelled of the Arab world, this Western car stood out.

So interesting. So interesting. Do you smell, do you scent stores? We scent Valentino stores. So if I go into Valentino, it is scented to smell of Valentino and you designed that. So the Valentino scent is based on the history of Rome, which is based on a lot of religion, Catholicism, based on blood. It's based on sensuality. It's based on death and life and everything in between. I mean, it's just a dash of chaos. And just a dash of chaos. Exactly.

But the beauty of it all, you're walking through Rome and you look down and the streets are dirty and it's all cobblestone and then you look up and you literally think you're looking at heaven with all the gold and the sky and how much people revered god and so that contrast is in the scent it's the beauty of the scent of valentino we did it with at the time with pierre paulo and maria grazia maria grazia is now at dior and pierre paulo has left valentino and these were the creative directors. For anyone that listens, that's in fashion. And their vision for Valentino was the future of Valentino because Mr. Valentino

had just left. And they really wanted it based on the history of Rome. It was super fun going through the archives and understanding the history of Valentino and then of course digging into the religious and social history of Rome. And this is pumped through the air conditioning. Yes. Okay. Changing tacks. I haven't opened this little magical book of mine in quite a long time,

and it is perhaps the favorite book that I've ever written. It was written at a time where I was getting frustrated that the world was getting more digital and analog was getting left behind. And I wanted to make something that could only exist in the analog world. analog was getting left behind. And I wanted to make something that could only exist in the analog world. So there's no digital version of this book. There's no audio of this book. It was inspired by children's books. I remember spending lots and lots of time in the children book session and bookstores reading tons of little children's books. This book is for adults, technically, but it is designed to look like a children's book. And when I met you and I said, I want to design a scent, what is more analog that I cannot recreate digitally

or audio-ly than scent? And so in this magical, magical little book, there is a scented page. And I know you created a technology for me where it's not scratch and sniff, it's rub and sniff. So just to gently rub my fingers over the page and for those who are listening, this technology is amazing. It lasts for 10 years. Now, I remember you had a long conversation with me, you interviewed me and asked me a lot of questions. And from those questions,

you were able to discern the notes and accords that would make the smell of optimism. Yes. Can you tell me what is in here and how you got to those? the notes and accords that would make the smell of optimism. Yes. Can you tell me what is in here and how you got to those? So the first question I asked you is, what is your color? Right, orange. Right, which is exactly what you said at the time. I said, well, why is it orange?

It's the color of optimism. Right. It's bright. It's confident. It's confident. It's fun. Right. And so based on that, so I did global research on color and smell. And what I found when I gave people a color board and gave them different ingredients or accords or finished fragrances is that everyone with about 97% accuracy smells the same colors.

If you give them a color board, they will all choose. They will all pick out the same color. So if you give somebody a scent, most people. 97%. 97% will perceive the same color so if you give somebody a scent most people 97 97 will perceive the same color of that scent in the whole world in the whole world there's no cultural conditioning generational conditioning living environment so give me an example so if i smell uh i mean i'm gonna if i smell a lemon i can see yellow but uh if i smell uh give me an example galbanum what you have no

idea what galbanum is. It's a resin that comes from a tree. Everyone smells green, dark green, with a little bit of brown, black, and maybe a touch of yellow or red if your nose is really good at discerning the chemical components. Okay, give me another one that I actually know what that is. Sandalwood. Sandalwood. Can I recall the smell of sandalwood?

Sandalwood is brownish-y yellow? It's kind of a light brown cream color, yeah. Vanilla. Oh, that's cream colored. Right, but vanilla itself is brown. That's true, vanilla is brown. But everyone does it as a creamy white. Yes.

And so this happens with all ingredients, all accords, all smells for everyone all over the world. And so what's interesting about that, brands first and foremost identify with color. this happens with all ingredients, all accords, all smells for everyone all over the world. And so what's interesting about that brands first and foremost identify with color. And so the first question I asked you is what's the color of your brand? You're backpedaling. When you take the color, you can get to the smell. So when I said orange, you're like, okay, I can, so this smells like not oranges, but it smells like the color orange. Okay. Keep going. the color orange. Okay, keep going. So what else did you make? How did you make this? So the next question was, what is the texture of your brand?

Smooth. Right. So what you said was the, you said Mac at the time, a new Mac, the brushed steel of a new Mac. And you said worn in leather. It was a contrasting. You wanted the smooth comfort of worn in leather, but with the smoothness of sounds about right yeah so that i forgot to mention that i made the cover of this soft to the touch so it feels like skin yeah because i want it to be human i forgot that so go on sorry back to my self-indulgence so how did you come up with this so your shape i asked

you what your shape was you said it was a handwritten circle this is a drawn circle exactly yes hand-drawn circle the size of a grapefruit. It's like, great. So when you design fragrance, you can design it in a shape. Is it round? Is it square? Is it triangular? It depends on how the molecules move, right? So I wanted them to move in a circle. So if you notice with your scent, you go deeper and deeper into it,

but you're always going back and back and back to the same signature. It doesn't delineate like some perfumes do, like a triangle would. Right. So that's the shape. And then, of of course the emotion was optimism. So the scent has to evoke that sense of inspiration, confidence, strength, brightness, freshness, feeling of potential and hope. And so that's what the scent does. And then I asked you to go back into olfactive memories, which I only do with people and not brands. And I don't ask

brands what they think about smell because it's irrelevant because they're not their target. But you are your target. So I said, you know, give me some olfactive memories that have deep meaning for you. And you said the smell of a fire after it's gone out from a fireplace. And so what we started with is we created the accord of the smell of a fireplace after it had been blown out

and what that smells like. And then we built layers around the scent of all those other things that i just mentioned and then more it is dark and it is i think the way you described it was light and dark combined the middle is very dark but dark in the most comforting feeling of safety and warmth and there's something in it that you're like i know this i know it you. And it makes you feel confident. Why don't more companies do this? Because it seems the power of Sipmel to create loyalty and memory, it seems that this should be a standard thing.

Like every company starts and says, we need a logo. Right? And by the way, for good reason. And companies are like, we need our company colors. For good reason. Some go as deep as having their own font. Or their own or their own sound right they have jingles apple microsoft they spend a fortune of money to make that chime when you turn on the macintosh you it's always you know that macintosh that apple sound every time you hear that chime and it's changed over the

years yes why is it that more companies don't do smell, considering that it is way more powerful for connecting the brand to the person and to the memories that they have and the experiences they have? It seems like this should be basic. There should be thousands of companies like yours doing this work, but there aren't. There's only a precious few. Well, the first reason is, is your sense of smell is fully developed before you're born. It's actually fully developed at about 16 weeks inside of your mother. And that's the beginning of your taste preferences, because odor is the only thing that passes through the amniotic fluids, or as your mother's eating, you either really like what she ate when she was pregnant once

you're born, or you hate it because she overindulged. So once you're born, your whole world is smell and emotion. And your other senses try to catch up, right? And now they are catching up. Your ability to talk about them is also growing. And so they're connected. So your sense of sight, you have a language for sight. You have a language for hearing. You have a language for taste.

You have a language for touch. You have no language for smell. Smell and language are not connected in the brain. And so when brands say that they want to communicate, identify, differentiate themselves against other brands or for the world, they never think about smell. They go rational. And when you tell them. They go rational. They go rational. And when you tell them how powerful smell is, and sometimes I show them if I am sitting with them, but you know, I haven't sat with every brand and I don't want to say it's divided by the sexes, but it in general is women are very

comfortable tapping into their intuition and into their emotion. Something that they naturally do. So if you tell a woman smells important, she's like, I know it is. I have children or I was a child or this or that. And they tell you all these, but you tell a man and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Smell doesn't even matter to me i don't wear perfume i'm like i can smell everything about you right now i can tell you if you brushed your teeth or not i can tell you if you put gel in your hair i can tell you what laundry detergent you're using you are fully scented and you don't even know it just because you don't spray a hydroalcoholic fine fragrance on your skin doesn't mean you're not wearing perfume and they're like oh i was like

what about the smell of new shoes you like that that smell? What about the smell of your dog? The smell of your kids? Those smells are fundamental emotional moments in your life that make you feel like you're grounded. Why wouldn't you do that with your brand? And most of these boardrooms are full of men. And like, that's the last thing we need is an emotional touch point for a brand. We just need people to spend more money. Yeah. By the way, that's the same in my work, which is women intuitively understand my work better than men. I explain my work whether it's why or one of the other concepts and women go, yep got it, and men go, can I see the case study? So is your nose good enough? You and I are sitting what about

three feet apart from each other? Three or four feet apart from each other three or four feet apart from each other yeah sure uh can you smell me yeah of course I can smell you so what do you know of me that's unfair though I mean I know too much about you like I know that you don't use shampoo and I can't smell any shampoo I don't use and you yeah I can't smell a hair product in you I know that you have a cat I can smell your cat right now he's need the vest you can smell how wonderful he is can vest. You can smell how wonderful he is, can't you? I can smell how wonderful he is. I can smell that you drank coffee. I did. Can you tell what flavor the coffee was? No. I wanted to say hazelnut, but no. It is hazelnut. Oh, it is? Oh, there we go. Well played. Just from talking to you. I can smell it. You're talking to me. Scary.

I can smell that you brushed your teeth before that. Scary. I can smell that you brushed your teeth before that. Yes. I can smell... That doesn't require intuition. I brushed my teeth when I woke up in the morning and I came and had a cup of coffee. Yeah but a lot of people have their coffee before they brush their teeth. That could be a good guess. It could but I'm not gonna give you that one. But I can smell like the... You can't tell me the brand. No I can't tell you the brand but i can smell the experiment wintergreen no whatever it is that is off of the yes nope i can cinnamon not yet yeah but what it says on the packaging is not necessarily what they used in the formula and i can tell you that

because i sent a lot of fight about this so the so um so the the uh i should tell people why I don't use shampoo. I'm not because I'm dirty. I have to have this. Now you forced me to go off topic. I'm so sorry. I have to do it now. So I do not use shampoo. That is true. And here's the reason.

I was at a dinner and I'm not very good at these dinners. So I sort of sit by myself and stare at the wall. And I do the same. I was a CEO dinner and there were two CEOs sitting next to me and I was listening to their conversation. They were talking about this guy who made billions of dollars. He built a company that sold shampoo and conditioner, a very famous hair care brand. And they were talking about this founder CEO of this brand. And one says to the other, you know his secret, right? And so of course I lean in.

And the other one goes, yeah, I know his secret. And the other one says, he says shampoo is a pile of shit. You don't, nobody needs shampoo. He says the natural oils in your hair is all you need to keep your hair clean and you just need hot water. You don't need shampoo. And he made billions of dollars selling people shampoo that he doesn't use. And so I thought, hmm. And so I, from that next day, that next morning, I didn't use shampoo. And I just used hot water and just sort of washed my hair. And does my hair look greasy? No.

Your hair looks lovely. Thank you. I haven't used shampoo in probably more than 10 years. And what's even more amazing to me about that is that your hair smells good. My hair smells good. It doesn't smell like apple. No. Or some artificial ingredient, which is what often what we use in shampoos.

Not that that's a bad thing. And I'll use it occasionally if I go like four days without showering. I've been wearing a baseball cap and it's been really hot out and I've been exercising and it's gross and I'll use it occasionally. But I probably shampoo my hair maybe three times a year. Wow. See, I shampoo my hair once a week. Right. So I don't know if it works with long hair. You'd have to do an experiment. I do go without soap. I don't use soap. I don't think my body needs it. I don't have a very, well, I don't have a very strong smell. I think it's because I don't eat meat.

No, but soap is a wetting agent. It actually lifts dirt off the skin. That's actually how soap works. It combines with water molecules. It actually does a thing. But my arms don't touch anything. I mean, maybe you don't have to. I don't really touch much. Funny thing is, I used to make a lot of shampoo and body wash

for brands. That's hilarious. What's one brand you would love to scent that you never have? You've done fashion. I've done everything. You've done sports. You've done cars. I've done banking.

Banking. Cruise ships. I mean, you've done a lot of things. What's a category that, that you think would be really fun to scent that you haven't? I would like, and this sounds like a kind of a general answer. We'll talk about the bank in a minute. I just heard you say bank. It's like the scent of a bank. Yeah, I've worked with a lot of banks.

I can tell you what the scent is. Get me out of here. That's the scent. You know, we did a headspace of money once. You know what a headspace is? No. So a headspace is technology. It used to be done with a glass, what looked like a bell. Now we have special plastic for it, but essentially put like a glass bell on top of an object. Let's say let's, for fragrance terms, we say put on top of a rose. And what we do is then we put a needle inside that records the viatol molecules around the rose. So essentially what your nose... around the rose so essentially what the box of sneakers the smell inside the smell and then we take the needle back

to a lab and we synthetically reconstitute it so we did that with money we did it with a dollar bill because we wanted to see what would come off of a dollar bill and if you think about money and doing a headspace of money what would it smell like it would smell like money yeah I mean a new dollar bill has a smell right it smell It smelled like ink. Ink and paper, yeah. Right, right. It actually smelled like marijuana, cocaine, human sweat, and a little bit of ink and paper. So it smells like investment banker.

But I'm bummed. No, no, I wasn't a joke. Yeah. I do appreciate that investment bankers and money smell the same. Potentially they do. I haven't done the research on that, but I'll let you know. I would like to create a smell, regardless of the industry or application, that allows people to feel joy. I think, not to get too serious, but the state of the world is in a conundrum.

People are feeling very unsafe. They're looking for comfort. They're looking for safety. They're looking for safety. They're looking for simplicity. And I think we have simple moments of joy in our everyday life. And I'd like to recreate those with people so they can find that safety when they're looking at the state of the world and not really knowing what the answer is. And how can they take that anxiety and bring it back to a form of nourishment and comfort? Take their garbage and make it into flowers.

Make a candle of that, please. Yeah, I'm working on it. Have you sent it like a children's ring of a hospital? So we have talked about it. This was pre-COVID. And since COVID, the hospital systems in general are a little bit overrun and overloaded, and we haven't been able to roll it out. But we did do a children's book in lieu of that, as you know very well.

The smell of a rainbow. And children love it. And it essentially, it's about, you's about the color research I was talking about. So it allows children to understand smell, emotion, and color from a very early age. And kids love it. And we made it so they could put it in their mouths. And it's their favorite book that often falls apart because they want to read it every night. And I get so many videos from kids from a very young age to six years old reading

this book and it bringing them so much joy. They have those little children giggles that we were talking about. And that makes my heart like burst. It doesn't matter how many cool luxury, blah, blah, blah sense I've done, but a child reading a book and smiling because of, you know, something we created. Magic. Yeah. Dawn, I hope that you make the smell of comfort and joy in this world that we are trying to make sense of no pun intended thanks so much for coming on absolutely fascinating so cool

and everyone should go check out your book The Smell of a Rainbow thank you thank you if you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism,

check out my website, simonsenic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbinius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.