

What am I? A Salad? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/03/what-am-i-a-sal.php

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SingAlong
_What am I? A Salad? Am I taking a bath or stocking a buffet?_

Spot on! always wondered why these utility product guys give food smells to
those products

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moe
There's probably been a lot of research in that area and just that happend to
come out on top. The "food/hungry" analogy may not even be too far off. I mean
- it's one of our basic instincts.

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biohacker42
Weren't there popsci articles 10+ plus years ago about how food scents are the
most attractive... but obviously no one would ever make a food scented
deodorant, that's just silly.

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moe
Huh? But, as the article states, many deodorants _are_ food scented.

In fact pretty much all household chemicals are food scented. It's all orange,
apple, grape, lemon, vanilla etc.

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JacobAldridge
I think that was the point. Ten years ago they said it would be silly, now
it's successful.

Ten years ago you'd be silly competing with Yahoo and AltaVista... And no, I'm
not suggesting making your search engine smell like food will help.

That would be silly.

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mpk
This trend has been going on for years. I always thought Aloe Vera was
something used in women's shampoo. Imagine my surprise when I recently found
it popping up in the supermarket in the drinks division. (Not bad, btw).

Lets not even start on the soaps, gels, bath ointments and friends which are
all orange, vanilla, apple, pear, grape, etc these days.

If you feel like reading up a little more on this, hit up
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume> for some mildly surprising information.

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DanielBMarkham
Here's the punch line, which I was too ashamed to admit:

I used to have one shampoo and one soap -- usually just a bar soap.

Now my shower looks like a spice rack: I have 10-12 bottles of different
"flavors" of Axe. The Axe guys managed to take a consumer that was low-end and
happy and turn them into a power user. In fact, my entire concept of washing
products has changed from one-size-fits-all to a flavor-of-the-day approach.

If I could take that ability and apply it to other web products, like search,
it would be awesome. How is it that some products are able to break new ground
in a _very_ mature market whereas other products fight it out for 2 percent?

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buugs
It broke new ground because teenagers like girls... a lot, I mean really
teenagers have a large amount of their parents disposable money and if they
are spending it on hygiene I'm sure parents are happy. I don't like the smell
of axe and I remember when it first came out the high school kids would spray
it and not just a little and soon the entire classroom smelt like terrible
perfume it just does not work for me.

I do like the commercials for some product, I think nivea for men or something
like that that, shows all the silly axe kids saying why they don't like it.
I'm sure for adults axe works just as well as any other thing but the people
under 25 really don't know what moderation is.

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mixmax
Coincidentally One of the Google ads on the page is for Axe when I'm looking
at it...

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sho
Does one really need to point out the obvious evolutionary selection pressure
in favour of being able to identify food sources by smell?

Next up: "I wonder why I don't like the sound of babies crying".

