Fragrance and technology are one and the same judging from Guerlain’s latest innovations. Last year, the LVMH brand’s Digital Innovation team unveiled Olfaplay, a "digital radio" platform (that includes an app and a website), that allows users to record, listen and share "intimate audio stories about perfumery". For its new project, Mindset, Guerlain is venturing into emotional territory with a technology concieved to measure the emotions evoked when smelling a fragrance—also a way of simplifying the perfume selection process for the consumer.
So how does it work? In the brand’s boutique, the consumer, equipped with a headset featuring a neural sensor, tests four olfactory families—fresh, floral, oriental and woody-chypre—and answers a series of questions while viewing "aspirational images". This experience results in a selection of three Guerlain fragrances that the consumer can sample to single out her preferred scent: the one that evokes the most positive emotions from among the brand’s 110 perfumes. In short, a quasi scientific approach to help the consumer discover her "olfactory crush".
Mindset was created in collaboration with Francky Trichet, AI researcher, vice-president digital at the University of Nantes, as well as co-creator of Neurokiff, an object that "measures the pleasure perceived while tasting a wine or culinary creation". Mindset launched on October 11 at Guerlain’s flagship on the Champs Elysées in Paris and will gradually roll out to the brand's boutiques internationally.
