🌟 A STAR IS BORN

Pop Mart’s latest empire-building chess move is a double-punch opening of a two-story retail store and baked goods space in Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa. Pop Bakery is a casual, more grab-and-go experience, not to be confused with Pop Mart Cafe in Bangkok, and is the first of the sub-line to open outside of China. The character Twinkle Twinkle is the literal star of the show, though other Pop Mart IPs will also feature in the form of food, collectibles, and character meet-and-greets.

Pop Bakery is the latest in a long, ever-morphing line of branded experiences that focus on physical spaces as a channel for brand expansion and consumer loyalty cultivation. The ROI and long-term impact of these activations on brand health and longevity are still under scrutiny. When everyone and anyone is doing it, what makes a branded experience truly additive to the brand and community?

 💡 OUR TAKE

Scent marketing isn’t new. Subway and Abercrombie have long used smell to pull customers in. Hotels and airlines have filled lobbies and cabins with signature scents for decades (some of them are now available to take home). But as more of the brand experience moves onto a screen, the parts that can’t — the ones that require smell, touch, or physical presence — need to do more work. Scent has a particular staying power. It can’t be experienced through a screen, yet it’s closely linked to emotion and memory.

As shopping moves online, the physical store has become less about the transaction and more about the experience. Brick-and-mortar offers the sensory stimulation and social interaction e-commerce can’t, and shoppers want more of it — 56% of surveyed consumers seek immersive, creatively designed experiences. ION Orchard, which has diffused its own 20-note signature scent for years, has re-positioned as a cultural destination, with SEA’s first Prada Caffè and Tiffany’s first regional Blue Box Café located in the mall. Rolex is staging museum-grade exhibitions of its history while luxury houses across China are turning stores and temporary spaces into galleries.

Scent is also playing a bigger role in how Gen Z constructs and expresses identity, with younger consumers interested in scent stacking, layering multiple scents to suit their mood or the occasion. This doesn’t just apply to women – 75% of Gen Z men say they layer multiple scents. Niche fragrance brands are another way to signal individuality, taste, and membership to a particular in-the-know community. On TikTok, fragrance is something to research, collect, and purchase with knowledge accruing its own cultural capital (see #smellmaxxing or one influencer’s 100 spray rule). The irony that this is all happening via a screen will not be lost on you. 

It makes sense that brands and entertainment properties want to be part of this story. FC Barcelona recently commissioned an olfactory identity: a scent ‘DNA’ developed from the club’s emotional, cultural, and distinctive attributes. Two fragrances have already been released, while an AI perfumer will allow the club to create future collections and personalized versions without losing the underlying Barça codes (for inquiring minds: the two launch scents lean on grass, bergamot, vetiver and sandalwood — a nod to the pitch but not the locker room). And with South Korean startup Deepscent able to turn moods and images into scent on demand, expect olfactory identities to become more adaptable, with custom options for launches or events. 

A scent identity has a similar function to a color palette or a sonic logo because it’s an ownable set of codes a brand can keep building from. But IP fragrances go further. FC Barcelona uses scent to evoke place and memory while Love and Deepspace gets more immersive by using it to make a fictional character feel real. Rafayel’s cologne isn’t marketed as ‘inspired by’, it’s sold as something the character would wear. 

For brands and IP owners, scent is an increasingly important way to reach people who are already spraying and layering fragrance as a form of self-expression. Thinking about how your brand might smell is just the start. What would wearing it allow someone to say about themselves? And who or what would it help them feel part of? 

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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