I love the smell of consumerism in the morning (and afternoon and evening)
Stopping by Downtown Plaza last night after work, I rode up the escalator from the parking structure and into a haze of fresh, sugary caramel corn scent wafting in the evening air.
[Inhale] Ahhh . . . the smell of Sacramento shopping.
There’s a cart parked in front of The Limited. It’s red, shiny, and offers several kinds of popcorn - including the swoon inducing caramel variety. You can buy it in any of three sizes.
Except I don’t recommend it. I’ve only tried it once and its bark is definitely better than its bite.
It’s not about eating it, though. Ever since I first moved to Sacramento 5 years ago, the smell of caramel corn is associated with not just shopping here, but being here. It’s a foolish association. There’s nothing necessarily Sacramentan about the corn. But it’s always been there when I’ve been there. It always smells the same. In a very strange, nonsensical way, it makes me think very homey thoughts. It’s a comfort food I don’t have to eat.
This is a time of year for noticing scents I think. The mothball odor around your sweaters, packed away since May and now out, awaiting that final turn for autumn and winter. The faint smell of pine trees and the woods 30 or so miles away, circling downtown when the air blows just right. The delta breeze carrying the scent of California agriculture, good and bad, from the fields being harvested. The undeniable essence of seasonal change that will never stop catching me by surprise . . . .
Take a deep breath. What’s up your nose?
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That last sentence made me laugh! You don’t really want to know…but lately the scent has been grapefruit on my hands. And you can get a whole bag of great grapefruit at the Raley’s on Freeport, where I’ve become a semi-regular shopper since my toothbrush escapade.
Too bad (or good, maybe) that caramel corn doesn’t taste as good as it smells. Mrs. Fields, though, upstairs in the DTP, delivers bang for the buck–
Maybe you are the unwitting victim of the mall’s new branding effort. Heh, heh.
I’ve been seeing references all over the place to a new marketing gimmick called “sense branding.” McDonalds has been doing this awhile, apparently. Its just a matter of time before each chain store adopts its own proprietary scent. Why not an entire mall…?
Here’s an interesting commentary on it, in case anyone’s interested. http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=1813
Closer to my own heart (and the latter paragraph in your post, Christiana), last fall, my six-year old daughter told me that the air smelled “like cucumber sandwiches” I took a deep breath and just marveled at her astuteness.
I’m in Denver right now and its freezing cold, so my own olfactory has temporarily shut down…
Sense-branding sounds like some MBA grad genius’s way of selling something most business already have back to them. To wit: if memory serves, there’s a Cinnabon at Horton Plaza in San Diego with this huge exhaust pipe pointed down on the walkway that just lures people in with the smell of fresh buns.
Lots of popular places have scent associations - including MickeyDs, if you go for that fry sort of smell. I do. Or In’n'Out?
Ain’t marketing grand?!