Using hypnosis for marketing research purposes is nothing new. Yet, it is little known, viewed as potentially manipulative, and it remains marginal. However, to many professionals, it does offer a huge advantage, as it helps unearth the underlying emotions behind choices by going beyond the limits of rational statements.

By combining surveys under hypnosis with controlled olfactory immersion, the Olfactive Insights showcase study, conducted by Promise Consulting, Deepersight and Cinquième Sens on a panel of 12 men and women with diverse profiles, identified 40 insights that help better understand the choices behind a perfume.

“At the intersection of intimacy and social implications, the choice of a fragrance is often guided by implicit social standards encouraging conformism,” explains Valérie Jourdan, CEO of Promise Consulting. “Buried memories and emotions play a key role, but they elude conventional rational approaches.”

Things left unsaid and things implicit

Unlike standard interviews, those using hypnosis help counter the explanations induced by cognitive biases and understand the unconscious processes behind our preferences for a particular perfume. “When I feel a subject makes too rational statements, I switch to hypnosis,” explains Sylvain Flender, the founder of Deepersight.

After a very short warming phase to break down barriers, the hypnotherapist leads participants to describe the perfume or explain what it tells them, deep inside. “Hypnosis exacerbates hyper-synaesthesia, which helps talk about a fragrance with images or through other media, like metaphors,” continues Sylvain Flender.

This method highlights perception patterns and associations which would not come out explicitly in other circumstances. Hypnosis has an influence on what people communicate. For example, the study reports the rather vague words used by one of the participants about his favourite perfume, Allure Homme Sport by Chanel. “My bottle is empty, I miss wearing it...” Under hypnosis, he got more explicit: “When I wear it, I feel unbreakable. Especially since I’m going through a tough period...”

Another participant revealed why she said a perfume was too strong: “He should not stand in front of me.” After using conventional arguments while they were conscious, another eventually explained the following: “My perfume is like my protective double, my guardian angel.”

Complex personas

In the second phase, Promise Consulting modelled the content of the interviews by identifying the structuring elements that created emotions. The work done for Olfactive Insights helped define three types of personas, according to their relationships with perfumes:

– Les Protégés (the Protected), for whom perfume acts as an armour; – Les Transcendés (the Transcendentals), to whom perfume elevates us; – Les Masqués (the Disguised), who use perfume as camouflage.

This enriched study reveals complex psychological profiles and helps elaborate more discerning, less superficial marketing strategies rooted in emotions.

Isabelle Ferrand, an expert in olfaction and CEO of Cinquième Sens, stresses the subjective dimension of perfumes and the legitimacy of this method: “There is no such thing as truth when it comes to perfumes. Everyone has their own feelings. Thanks to neurosciences, we know that the hedonic impact in the brain comes ahead of the identification of a smell,” she explains.

She sees plenty of applications possible. For example, it could help better analyse “the olfactory consistency of a fragrance portfolio”, or explore consumers’ perceptions “when smelling the many flankers of a perfume”.

In the perfume industry, more than in any other consumer sector, stating that most choices made are mainly based on emotional components is almost truism! A tool like Olfactive Insights can efficiently support bolder marketing strategies. “We can rethink segmentations or customer typologies using a more agile method, and more importantly, with concrete activation drivers,” concludes Valérie Jourdan.

The major trends and latest innovations in fragrance development will be presented and discussed at the upcoming Fragrance Innovation Summit on November 26 in Paris.

Detailed program: www.fragranceinnovation.com/en/