The world smells bad. It’s high time we did something about it
Global sonic agency DMLDD recently announced its foray into the world of scent branding, with ‘Scent by DLMDD’. The agency’s co-founder, Max De Lucia, explains how smells are overlooked by designers and how they can elevate brands.
Cities smell bad. Public transport smells bad. People smell bad. And much of the world around us smells, frankly, pretty bad.
Yet somehow we’ve learned to live with it or at least ignore it.
Which is strange, given how powerful scent is.
Of all the senses, it’s the most direct, the most emotional, the most deeply tied to memory. You can forget what something looked like, but you don’t forget how it smelled.
And that’s not conjecture, it’s science. We can recall a scent with 65 percent accuracy after a year, compared to visual memories, which fade to around 50 percent in just a few months.
Despite this, we’ve spent decades designing the world for eyes and ears. We’ve tuned how products sound when they open, perfected the thud of a car door, the weight of a dial and the hush of engineered drawers. We’ve obsessed over materials like brushed metal, soft leather and polished stone. We’ve colour-matched everything, softened the light and curated the sound.
But the air around us? It has been left to chance.
Most environments smell unintentional. They are the byproduct of whatever is going on inside them. Or worse, they smell like artificial citrus, industrial freshness or vague florals trying to cover up what came before.
That’s not just a shame. It is a design crime. Because scent has always played a far more vital role than we give it credit for. Long before branding and packaging, scent was how we navigated the world. It told us what was safe, what was desirable and what belonged to whom.
It still does.
Scent is immediate. One breath and your decision is already made: before the logo, before the music, before the lighting affects your mood. It’s not a flourish or a finishing touch, it’s your first impression. And that first impression is the craft of perfumery.
Just like sound, scent is part of identity. The perfect scent doesn’t just smell good, it gives shape to a brand’s presence. It makes a space feel deliberate. It gives a product memory. It builds trust, emotion and desire before anything else has the chance to.
Sometimes it makes you want to stay longer. Sometimes you want to take it home. Occasionally, you want to wear it or even taste it. That is scent at its best.
The magic of scent is that the language perfumers use is born from music composition: notes, melodies, harmonies, signatures. The design systems between the two worlds mirror each other beautifully. It’s why translating brand identity into scent has felt like a seamless creative leap; not a departure but a continuation.
We want clients to come in, experience sound and get enticed by scent, and vice versa. The goal is to build brands that don’t just speak and look the part, but feel multisensory at their core. A sound and scent identity working in tandem. It’s not a gimmick, it’s the future.
The truth is, no one has cracked the world of scent branding yet. Not at the level sight and sound now live at. Which means the opportunity is wide open for the brands brave enough to care about the air. We’ve shaped how brands look and sound.
But the world smells bad. Your brand probably smells bad. And it’s high time we did something about it.
