Businesses search to make scents online

(CNN) -- What should this Web page smell like?

That question may sound bizarre, but the possibility of bringing scents to the Internet experience continues to tantalize marketers. During the dot-com boom, a company called DigiScents promised and failed to make scented e-mails and Web sites commonplace with a scent synthesizer (called iSmell) that hooked up to personal computers.

It flopped, but that didn't stop NTT Communications in Japan from releasing its own version of the idea a few years later in 2005. And in the near future NTT will likely add a cell phone element to the idea as well.

Picture this: On Valentine's Day, a Tokyo girl gets a text message from an admirer. Please click this link near your fragrance emitter, it says. Her emitter is a sleek six-inch device with various oils that can be combined in varying ratios to create different scents.

When she clicks on a link, her phone plays romantic music and displays roses and hearts onscreen. It also sends a "scent recipe" via infrared signal to the diffuser, which glows red and emits the smell of rose petals and chocolate -- just for her.

That's the idea, anyway. It's hard to imagine that scenario unfolding in most countries, but in gadget-loving Japan it could actually happen. NTT deserves credit, at least, for independent thinking, which is what's needed to pursue an idea already dismissed by many as impractical.

The company's Aromageur scent emitter, still being sold in Japan three years on, is hooked up to a PC. "Scent recipes" are downloaded from the Web, each one combining the oils in a different way to create various smells.

Sales figures are under wraps, but the device has certainly been used in many homes and businesses in Japan. Theaters have used it during movies, placing five or so in an "aroma premier section" and bringing to mind "Smell-o-Vision" experiments of decades past. Radio broadcasts have been crafted so that Aromageurs emit certain scents during certain songs.

No killer app has emerged, though.

The Aromageur is limited in its range. While it can reproduce a number of different scents, a "universal emitter" that can fool a nose into thinking it smells anything from one moment to the next is probably a long ways off -- if it ever arrives.

Scents are far trickier to create than, say, colors. A printer can produce any color by mixing a few inks in certain ratios.

Smell, on the other hand, "is chemosensory, and we respond to the very precisely balanced mixes of molecules," says Simon Harrop, CEO of the Brand Sense agency, which helps clients incorporate scents into their marketing.

Smell can be particularly effective as a marketing tool because it goes straight to the limbic system, the part of the brain involved in emotion, behavior and long-term memory. And the nose works fast: a few hundred milliseconds can make the difference between identifying a smell or not.

Some direct marketers now use scented envelopes to make a lightning-fast impression on recipients -- important when so much junk mail lands almost instantly in the trash.

Indeed, "scent marketing" is now a well-established field in the offline world. Some hotels have developed signature scents. All kinds of companies use scents to lure customers into retail spaces -- and into different states of mind.

The latter might be more important, says Xiuping Li, a marketing professor at the National University of Singapore.

Earlier this year she published research showing that appetizing food smells made retail shoppers more likely to make unplanned purchases, even on a tight budget. The tantalizing smells put them in a "present-oriented state" and less likely to appreciate remote gains.

The latter means delicious smells might backfire in some stores, she notes. A GNC shop, for instance, needs customers in a frame of mind where they can appreciate the more abstract, longer-term benefits of taking vitamins and supplements -- not impatient for satisfaction.

In any case, as more companies get involved in scenting various spaces, the need for remote management of scent zones might arise. For instance, a sprawling resort could want some scents for the lobby, others for the gym and still others for the pool bar -- and it might want different scents at different times in each of those spaces.

For that, an Australian company called Air Aroma has recently come up with a service, called Arologic, for remotely managing scent zones using wireless networking technology.

But what about consumers? Do we really want to incorporate scent emitters into our personal lives, as we have with computers, printers and cell phones?

One way emitters might find broader acceptance is if they're combined with other appliances. NTT says scent-diffuser applications are being developed for air-conditioners, TVs, and video game consoles.

Emitters could also evolve into fancier stand-alone units, capable of producing more sounds, lights and scents. "Scent DJs" could emerge who "spin" these emitters to make users feel good based on their personality, mood, and place. (Much as makers of personalized spa remedies do now.)

These DJs would craft "mixes" that could be downloaded as files and shared among cell phone users. Instructions from the phone to an emitter could set off a blend of music, lights and smells, all carefully chosen to complement one another. There could be smaller emitters for the home and larger ones offered in, say, hotel suites.

For now the NTT mobile service -- called Fragrance Communications, or "Kaori Tsushin" in Japanese -- is in trial phase, along with the new version of the emitter. The company hopes to launch them commercially in Japan in the near future, possibly this year.