Get your business going with that uncanny smell of dried blood!

Smell & the power of attraction

A world class exhibition. Is what the Museum of Evolution in Danish Knuthenborg Safari Park calls this interactive, multisensory exhibition on the world of dinosaurs.

They’ve used dried blood to induce the uncanny smell, that may have accompanied those huge predators of a long lost time…

The fascinated host with vibrating nostrals, who was reporting live for the national broadcasting company, was in no way hiding the fact, that she felt utterly disgusted by the distinct smell … 😉

The power of disgust

Do take a note of this if you are in any shape, form or way in the business of co-creating experiences with your customers!:

It is a fact, elaborated by anthropologist David Le Breton in his book «Sensing the World«, where he dedicated his last chapter to «The Cuisine of Disgust«, that even unpleasant olfactory stimuli can contribute to phenomenal experiences.
Smell impressions are by far the fastest way to the emotionel response of your experience participants. And if your storytelling is virtuos enough… even horrifying odours can contribute to the creation of value.

Whale stench and customer satisfaction

🐋 Example: A respondent of mine guides his guests to see the big humpback and orca whales along the coast where I live here in the North of Norway…. He once told me how guests are the most excited and impressed when they get a rare chance to experience the rotten smelt of the whale’s blow up close… I wrote a bit about it in my master’s thesis from 2021.

Multisensory innovation

As a «sensory nerd», I love to explore the multisensory dimension of experience production.

The example with the dried blood is very promising for the development of multisensory experience design. In what can be seen as a too dusty world of indoor exhibitions, with grumpy custodes and a line to the public toilet…

And what if multisensory design as a given would present us with, not only the smell of a T-Rex, but the vibrational sound of it too… Its horrendous roar activating our primal fear, as we push over the grumpy custodian to get as fast as possible to the public toilets?