What Does Your Brand Smell Like? How Scent Identity Works — and Why I Create Mine from Andalusia

Every brand has a visual identity. A logo. A color palette. A font that says something about who you are before a single word is read.

But walk into almost any hotel, boutique, or retail space in the world and ask yourself: what does this brand smell like?

Most of the time, the answer is nothing. Or worse — whatever cleaning product was used that morning.

That's a missed opportunity. And it's the gap I've spent 18 years working to close.

Scent is the only sense with a direct line to emotion

There's a reason certain smells stop you in your tracks. The way a grandmother's kitchen, an old bookshop, or the air just before rain can take you somewhere instantly — no thinking required.

That's not nostalgia. That's neuroscience. Your sense of smell bypasses the rational brain entirely and connects directly to the limbic system — the part responsible for emotion and memory. No other sense does this.

For brands, this means one thing: scent doesn't have to convince. It just lands.

A well-designed scent identity doesn't shout. It settles into a space and becomes part of how people feel there — and how they remember it afterwards.

What scent identity actually means

Scent identity is not about making a space smell nice. Any candle can do that.

Scent identity asks a harder question: what should this brand make people feel? And then translates that answer into fragrance — with the same rigour a visual designer brings to a logo or a typographer brings to a font choice.

I've done this for museums that wanted visitors to feel the era of a painting. For hotels that wanted guests to feel immediately calm upon arrival. For brands that wanted their packaging to carry an emotional signature before it was even opened.

The work is always different. The process is always the same: listen first, translate second, test third.

Why Andalusia is part of the work now

In 2024 I moved from the Netherlands to the hills above Almuñécar, on Spain's Costa Tropical. People sometimes ask if that changed the work.

It did — but not in the way you might expect.

The raw materials of scent are everywhere here. Citrus groves, wild herbs on the hillside, the particular dryness of the air in su

mmer, the salt coming off the Mediterranean. Living inside a landscape that smells this distinctly of itself sharpens something in how you think about fragrance.

It also puts distance between me and the reflex of the European creative industry — the tendency to reach for the same references, the same safe palette. Working from here, with that landscape outside the window, pushes the work toward something more specific.

The brands that get this are pulling ahead

Scent is no longer just a finishing touch — it has become a strategic tool for shaping mood, triggering memory, and building brand identity. The brands investing in this now are building something their competitors can't copy with a bigger budget or a better logo.

As competition increases, businesses are prioritising the development of custom scents tied closely to their brand identity — and scent is increasingly becoming not a novelty but a branding necessity.

The ones who wait will catch up eventually. But the emotional memory their competitors are building in their customers right now — that's not something you can buy back later.

If you've never thought about what your brand smells like

That's exactly where this work starts.

Not with a product catalogue. Not with a diffuser recommendation. With a conversation about what your brand stands for, what you want people to feel, and what stays with them after they leave.

That's what a scent identity is. And that's what I build.

→ Curious what this could look like for your brand? Send a message