Hornbach is a Geman DIY store chain offering home improvement and do-it-yourself goods decided to stop and withdraw the recent campaign “The smell of spring” after being criticized for promoting racist and sexist stereotypes.
“Spring Air”: DIY retailer & the subculture of BO
Hornbach is a Geman DIY store chain offering home improvement and do-it-yourself goods. “The scent of spring” is the title of its most recent brand campaign:
Macht & Duft: Politiker als Nase
In diesen Tagen vor der Landtagswahl in Bayern verdient der amtierende Ministerpräsidenten Markus Söder besondere Aufmerksamkeit. Dabei überrascht ein Portrait mit Bezügen in die Bildwelt des osmanischen Reiches: Was also verbindet Markus Söder mit einem Sultan?
Wo bleibt der Duft? A new whiff of politics?
In the ongoing election campaign in the German state of Bavaria the neoliberal FDP tries to sell the political agenda with the whiff of a new car scent and triggers some controversy. What is “aseptic” about it as the FAZ argues? Is it authentic? Or is this a new step...
“We-Feeling”: The sociality of scents!
What is social or even political about scent? This Scent Culture Comment & Review reveals some of the implications of a casual interview.
He suffered death and was buried
The entombment of Christ is one of several standard representations of Jesus’s suffering and death at the hands of the Romans. According to the Christian tradition Pontius Pilate granted Joseph of Arimathea permission to take Christ’s body down from the cross for burial. In addition, the gospel according to John...
When will there be a professor for olfaction & space? And where?
The University of Applied Sciences & Arts Hildesheim is looking for a new professor for “light & space” for its department of lighting design. Reflecting on the olfactory turn we slightly rewrote the official job opening:
Smelly typography
Can letters smell? How can typography smell? This school project experiments with smelly materials – in this case onions. Interestingly, there is even an economic layer of meaning: Apparently, onions are expensive in India! Sneha Keshav: “An experimental type done as a school project. Seems apt right now, given the...
Olfaction is the message
There are different ways how to address smell in advertizing. Campaigns in perfumery are an obvious case. Moreover, we recently discussed how even negative feedback on the olfactory quality of a product is used in advertizing. The example of today stands out in a different way.
Fragrant patterns in big data !
The web facility Google Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The horizontal axis of the main graph represents time (starting from 2004), and the vertical is how often selected terms are searched for...
Do the captives actually smell the fire?
A few days ago, I happened to come across this visualization of Plato’s thought provoking Allegory of the Cave. What the captives see and hear are shadows cast be objects they do not see. But what about the fire?
Creating applications for little trees
Little Trees seem to be ubiquitous these days.
Olfactory demonstration
Tobacco smell is pretty marginalized these days. In many professions smokers are stigmatized. Public health is certainly an argument. Culturally, it is an extreme change compared to previous times. The new smoke-free is normalized.
Scent masquerade!
This iconic narrative from the Judeo-Christian tradition is full of olfactory references that are topical today:
New product scents
The Swiss retailer http://www.digitec.ch is currently running a thought provoking advertizing campaign. It is basically broadcasting what customers wrote about a product on the retailer’s website. This feedback needn’t be positive. It can be devastating. But it must be interesting. And in fact, the product scent – intended or accidental...
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