Despite the impossibility of the task, khaki-clothing champion Gap, Inc has decided to promote its range of fragrances over the wire. The internet can cater for most forms of conventional marketing, but it can’t yet cope with scratch-n-sniff, so the enterprising folks at Gap have worked on a lateral approach. If it were possible to actually send scent through the computer, we would, says Michael McCadden, Gap Senior Vice President of Marketing. Since it’s not, we decided instead to share with customers our interpretation of what GapScents would sound like. When users click on fragrance icons in the online ads, they will activate a different .WAV audio file for each scent. The noisy/smelly ads will appear in the Digital City online service – part of America Online – in the run-up to Mother’s Day. It all sounds pretty fishy to us.
