We are interested in voice: what you read from different voices, what assumptions, judgements and decisions you make based on voice without even being conscious of its influence. Alongside our series of workshops on Unconscious Bias, we are launching an open library to listen to, capture, and discuss voices. To find out more and add your voice visit VetyverVoices.
Unconsciously Biased /
Are you unconsciously biased? Last week Campaign Underground challenged delegates to explore and confront their own Unconscious Bias. We designed three sensory experiences to explore unconscious bias through voice, music and smell. Click here for more information on workshops and Unconscious Bias and The Senses.
Wizard of Oz style, we asked everyone to listen to the voice behind a curtain and answer a live survey about their perceptions and assumptions about age, class, intelligence, job, sexuality, status, wealth, education, ethnicity and behaviours. How do you feel about the person: would you hire, work for, date, become a friend of the person based on their voice?
We're fascinated with the results and want to extend the conversation outside the conference. Vetyver Voices #vetyvervoices is a campaign to collect, share and listen to voices and provide a platform to explore and discuss the assumptions and value judgements we make without realising. Visit www.vetyver.co.uk/vetyvervoices to record share your voice and join the conversation.
Re-juvenate creativity: sensory workshops /
New cross-modal ways of designing and thinking are leading to much richer experiences. Multi-sensory is fast becoming the norm and not the exception. It has direct impact on behaviour, mood, pace and commerce.
The senses are powerful, demanding physical and emotional responses and appealing directly to instinct, memory and emotions. Creativity requires every sense, but we often don’t call on their help. We help agencies to stretch creativity to new places and bring our sensory expertise and network to unleash those powerful tools, adding new dimensions to your projects.
Kick off the New Year with a fresh approach and re-connect with your senses. Here’s a quick overview of some of the things we offer:
Sensory Workshops
Sensory workshops push different buttons and extend the boundaries of creative thinking and expression. We create these bespoke to requirements or we also have tried and tested formats.
Sensory Events and Talks
Inspire and engage audiences. Introduction to sensory design or crafted to your event/subject. Bespoke talks and seminars on the power of the senses seminar and keynotes.
Sensory Surgeries
Call us in to brainstorm and workshop ideas and add an extra dimensions to your creative teams or send over the brief, concepts or presentations and we’ll add ideas / smells / sounds.
Sensory Creative and Consultancy
Stand out. Using the senses makes concepts shine, give your ideas the impact they deserve.
To find out more call Claire on 07779229938 or email us at feel@vetyver.co.uk.
#sensoryChristmas Cracker Games /
Wrapping ripping, Kings choir, ice cubes cracking, almond trees shaking, Monopoly ataptaptaping, nuts cracking, Quality St squeaking, kids quibbling, Dad snoring, folding foil, Grannie’s whiskers, cashmere socks, Christmas jumpers, wellies walking, turkey steaming, candles burning, candles blown, No5 gifting, fire smoking or chestnuts roasting...
What sounds are you looking forward to hearing this Christmas? What textures? What smells will you savour? We’d love to know @vetyverfeels#sensorychristmas
We have put together some tricks and games to tune in to your senses this Christmas.
Now for a little wine tasting [best to view full screen]...
Click here to explore the power of sound
What sounds are you looking forward to hearing this Christmas? What textures? What smells will you savour? We’d love to know tweet @vetyverfeels #sensorychristmas
Christmas Crackers: Tune Into The Senses, Tune In To Christmas /
We'd love to know what Christmas sounds like and smells like all around the world, join us on Twitter #sensorychristmas
Sensory Christmas #4: Made to Measure /
The After Eight pouch, the Toblerone mountain, the pop of a Snapple, the pitch of a Ferrari, the smell of a Bentley, the colour of a Tiffany box, the sonic mnemonic of Intel. It is the unique signifiers which distinguish your brand and allow people to fall in love with it. Everything you do should strengthen your brand narrative.
Everyone does Christmas so how do you stand out from the crowd and ensure that you are not lost in the nose?
The winter holidays every year are a great opportunity to do something special which will bring joy moments of joy to people, but this is frequently a missed opportunity as brands reach for easy off the shelf options.
A brand has a positioning, a set of values and a story and the way your brand behaves should reflect that in every way. Even a Christmas theme should be designed specifically to reflect your brand in the same way your logo and colour palette do. It is particulary important in the competitive Christmas market not to loose your point of difference - sounds and scents should be designed for your brand.
Christmas always feels like it comes more quicker than we are expecting, but it doesn’t need to take long to create sounds and smells. A sensory footprint can be created by experiences: hot toddies, chocolatiers, buskers, a bell over the door, or rung behind the bar like in It's a Wonderful Life, or a simple soundscape.
Stand out with sensory design, tune in to your senses and tune into Christmas.
Sensory Christmas #3: Context /
It’s been said that NOISE is sound that is out of place, something unwanted and inappropriate to surroundings. In our view that applies to sound and smell alike.
There is a wealth of Christmassy sensory experiences to draw from but these need to be treated with respect and care. Cranberry, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves are flavours associated with both Christmas and this time of year, but even within this palette, appropriateness and context need to be considered for positive effect.
Mulled wine is completely Christmassy, but better in a bar or kitchen rather than the loo. The scent of pine can evoke the feeling of Christmas trees, but used in a loo or kitchen it’s more likely to trigger a sense of cleaning products. The smell of pine in a wooden lodge could transport you to the ski slopes, but a strong whiff of pine in a Hackney pub is more likely to feel hackneyed.
We have subconscious expectations about what environments should feel like. If sound or smell doesn’t correlate with the environment, it jars. Context is king when it comes to the senses.
Sound, smell and sensory stimulation are always charged with meaning. Whether in the form of a cacophony or silence, it should always be appropriate to the environment.
To find out more or organise a Sensory Audit email feel@vetyver.co.uk
Sensory Christmas Principle #2: Authenticity /
To make it authentic, consider what does your brand represent at Christmas? How can sound and smell bring it to life? Will they add or detract?
A Swedish Christmas sounds and smells very different from an American or English Christmas, and a New Yorker Christmas feels completely different from a Californian. Remaining true to your brand origins and narrative will result in an authentic Christmas experience.
At Christmas time, it’s more important than ever to pay attention to your brand and sensory footprint. What are the sensory experiences important to your brand and customers and how will bringing in a ‘Christmassy’ theme work with this? Many brands are not aware of how they FEEL and discover useful surprises when they take the time to think about it which is why we begin our work with a sensory audit.
Playing Jingle Bells in a spa is going to jar with the ambience of relaxation and peace. However a soundscape of footsteps crunching through snow and the smell of a pine lodge or sauna would create a sense of season and evoke a Scandinavian Christmas. This approach would foster a feeling of cosy comfort, cocooning guests and heightening the emotional experience, rather than detracting from it. But obviously that wouldn’t work at all for an Asian spa brand.
A Christmas soundscape and smell which gives you a sense of place, relevant to your brand and your business serves to make them love you, love Christmas and relate the two.
To find out more or organise a Sensory Audit email feel@vetyver.co.uk
Sensory Christmas Principle #1: don’t overwhelm /
At Christmas the sensory impact can already be overwhelming and standing out amongst the cacophony can be a real challenge. The result is frequently a high street shouting match. No wonder many of us have retreated to the internet to do our Christmas shopping. This heralds a missed opportunity, not just to make the sale, but also to build a trusting relationship and great brand experience with your customers.
The temptation is to add cliché Christmas music, smells and decorations. There are two problems here: the first is that Christmas experiences are by default, well Christmassy, and they don’t represent your brand (unless your shop happens to be the 25th December shop in Bath); and the second is that given the heightened seasonal stress levels and the relatively limited and repetitive repertoire of festive encounters you will just be adding to the noise and stress. So rather than churning out the same playlist or lighting an orange and cinnamon candle you can create a sanctuary and design your own Christmas.
A sense of sanctuary is powerful at this time of year. If you focus on making the services relevant and the staff full of Christmas joy, (as well as enabling them to be heard!) you are helping to solve the Christmas stress and panic.
It’s also important to realise that no sense exists in isolation. What we hear affects perception of touch, taste, safety. What we see and hear affects our perception of taste. Seeing a picture of a mountain CAN actually make the water taste cleaner and red lighting can make a bun taste sweeter. It is essential to consider the interplay between the senses. Businesses frequently forget to consider the sensory interaction, particularly at Christmas. Nobody wants to walk into an environment where all your senses are assaulted. It means there is no space to think, feel or explore: it can trigger our instinct to fight or flee.
Used well, one sense can enhance perception and experience of another, together they should work in harmony and to have an effect they need to be noticed. So if you are turning up the music and the smell, dim the lights and give everyone the space to enjoy a little dusting of the magic of Christmas.
Sensory Art Installations /
The art world is dominated by the visual arts, but there are huge opportunities to be found in exploring the other senses. We are artists, strategists, musicians, perfumers, curators and producers: advising, creating, curating and commissioning. We have created work for galleries, shops, venues and hospitals.
We were commissioned by Future City to collaborate with Jason Marks to create a multi-sensory exhibition inspired by Au Rebours a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans for Foyles Gallery. We designed two bespoke scents in response to the curatorial brief and worked with Jason and Students from Nottingham university to create a collaborative soundscape, taking Jason's ceramic work to a new dimension.
We were also commissioned by Future City to conduct a sensory audit, (exploring the relationship between patients, visitors and staff and their sensory environments), and develop concepts for sensory interventions and installations as part of the arts program for the new Cancer Care Building for Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital.
We collaborated with Nick Ryan, The London Contemprary Orchestra and Quayola & Sinigaglia to create a truly multi-sensory performance for Imogen Heap's Reverb Festival at The Roundhouse. We workshopped scents with the composer and performers which fed directly into the creative process for designing this unique event and then oversaw the production of the scent which ambitiously required our unique scent to be pumped around the 1700 capacity venue at specific moments during the performance.
We work to transform the expectations of the traditional artspace, by bringing in multisensory dimensions and we are excited to announce our first exhibition. SENSING LONDON is an ambient sensory art exhibition across London being organised as part of the Open Senses festival programme.
Whether you need to commission a sensory network or programme, are a sensory artist or are just interested in exploring the use of sound, smell, taste and touch in interesting ways, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch.
http://howtospendit.ft.com/art/334-breaking-the-mould
http://www.vetyver.co.uk/blogonsensory/synes-at-the-roundhouse
http://www.vetyver.co.uk/blogonsensory/foyles
http://www.foyles.co.uk/exhibition-ode-rebours
A sensory home: sensory audit /
We all know that sensation of coming home and feeling the warm fuzz of familiarity. It's a feeling you recognise but probably can’t quite put your finger on. We’re frequently unaware of the sounds and smells of home, they become wallpaper to our lives, white noise. But when you open your front door, your senses trigger an emotional response, whether that’s a feeling of safety and comfort or something negative. However you feel when you walk through the door, your perception of home and your response to it, is inevitably very different from your visitors.
The only time many of us come close to sensorial awareness in our own homes is when we’ve been away for a couple of weeks, only then can you tell that home has a very particular smell. Sound and smell link directly to the emotional centre in our brains and we log or ‘file’ smells in our brain with the emotion, so you smell , you feel. So is your home a sensory haven? Is it making you feel like you want to? Is it making your visitors feel how you want them to?
Whether you want to re-do your home but keep the same feel, or whether you are going through life changes and want to feel differently in your home, the sensory environment can achieve that. The first thing I do when I move is re-clean everything with my own products, cook with spices, put on the washing machine and light candles. If it doesn’t smell like home, it doesn’t feel like home.
At Vetyver, we frequently work with businesses to create more engaging and more memorable sensory experiences - whether they are bands, beers, retailers or hospitals. We think that the process is equally, if not more, relevant and important at home.
In our commercial work, we kick-off with a Sensory Audit: a detailed assessment of all aspects of the brand, through every touchpoint and the whole customer experience. We notice ambient sound, smell, touch, colour, textures, materials, temperature, physical space and interaction with people. And the balance between them. We immerse ourselves in the whole journey and build a complete picture of a brand.
A sensory audit is something you can do in your own home. It will help you work out opportunities for adding sensory elements such as soundscapes or candles, and identify particular areas for consideration. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so before you change anything it’s important to understand your sensory footprint and work out your assets, your obstacles and what you want to achieve.
So how to? We suggest you do it with a friend who doesn’t live with you, they will notice things you're immune to. Prepare a notebook by taking one page each for every room or area of your home: one for bathroom, living room and so on. Then divide each page up into a sections for each of the 5 senses: SMELL, SEE, HEAR, TASTE, FEEL, or download and print our template Matrix to guide you through it.
Paying attention is the name of the game, to each sense in turn and taking a moment to observe and see with a fresh set of eyes and ears. Close your eyes and really concentrate on each sense one by one. And then work out how the elements are making you FEEL. You’ll be amazed by the insights, smells and sounds you haven’t even noticed before. If you are doing it with someone else, get them to do it silently and then talk about it afterwards, so you don't influence each other.
You might notice that a light emits a low level buzz which puts you on edge, or a clock ticking which calms you down, the smell of rubbish or the smell of honeysuckle drifting in an open window, or the way the dust dances in the sunshine before warming the floorboards at a certain time of the day. Small changes can remove the irritations and make the most of the beauty around you. Just knowing your home better helps you make the most of it. Move the bin, replace a light, or put a reading chair and a tiny table by the window so you remember to take a moment to read, have a cup of tea, toast your toes in the sun and enjoy watching the dust dance in ray of light.
A sensory audit is fun. We're confident that after you have completed it you will feel more engaged in your home and have a stronger sense of how the five senses impact your mood, health and sense of home. It's a great process to go through before you try out some of the tips and tricks in the other blogs in our Sensory Home Series.
A sensory home: an introduction
A sensory home: multi-sensory dining and scent
A sensory home: multi-sensory dining and sound
Sensory Christmas /
On the first day of Sensory Christmas..
Part of the joy of Christmas is the glorious sensory pleasures it heralds. Scorching mince pies in twinkling houses; the scent of nordic pine, candles and open fires; turkish delight and candied almonds; Quality St, turkey and all the trimmings; and Christmas carols and the crinkle of wrapping paper. Or maybe you dread: the sickly smell of cheap cinnamon candles; the unwelcome trill of Rocking Around the Christmas tree; the familiar onslaught of Jingle Bells in every shop.
We're excited and repelled in equal measures, as we are bombarded for what can seem like months.
Are businesses giving Christmas the consideration it deserves? The role of a business in the festive season is not to provide spiritual support (excepting the School of Life), it is to be successful and to stand out. But that doesn’t mean shouting loud and falling into clichés. By stepping back and considering your value to your customers, your relationship, and the way you are experienced, you can give the greatest gift - to make it as joyful and stress free as possible.
So what constitutes Christmas joy and what creates Christmas horror? What are the cliches, pitfalls and alternatives? We will be exploring this in our 12 days of Christmas series through December.
Follow along on the blog or with the #sensorychristmas hashtag on twitter
Sensory Reports: Geek Sheet /
Studies prove that not only does it make good commercial sense to consider all five senses, but it is critical for successful brands of the future. For most companies this is uncharted territory, so we are publishing a series of reports to introduce the potential and pitfalls of sensory design. To find out more view our Sensory Geek Sheet and our Top 10 Sensory Mistakes, we also have reports on Sensory Healthcare and Sensory Hotels. To find out more email feel@vetyver.co.uk.
Creating sensory hotels /
Sensory experiences evoke strong memories, intensify our experience, trigger powerful emotions and tap into unconscious desires. Nowhere is this more important and powerful than in a hotel.
Brands and businesses put a lot of thought into how they look, but few consciously pay attention to the way they are felt. Yet the more senses you appeal to, the stronger the experience and the relationship becomes. The senses appeal to our primal and emotional centres transcending logic. They can create physical responses and create a set of sensory mnemonics or triggers (think Pavlov's dog). At Vetyver we work with hotels to make sure the senses are being delighted and working towards a truly seductive and addictive guest experience. Sensory design and products can also generate new revenue streams and extend your brand outside your hotel into people’s homes and new sales channels.
Before we begin harnessing the power of the senses, it’s really useful to understand the existing experience, so our work begins with a sensory audit - it always throws up a few surprises. For Bespoke Hotels we carried out a Sensory Audit on the Bermondsey Square Hotel, London and worked on a sensory strategy and concepts for the newly launched Gotham Hotel, Manchester.
The audit included a full investigation and report on the sensory experience of the brand covering SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE and FEEL. We looked at the customer journey across space and time and across all channels, assessing how the hotel appealed to each of the senses; how the experience reflects the brand; and how all the senses were working together. The audit combines qualitative and quantitative data and includes interviews with staff, customers and on site visits from our team plus a full set of recommendations.
As a hotelier you have the power to control every detail of your guests experience and how they feel at a given point of that journey, from the colour, pace, temperature, quality, comfort, smell and memorability. Identifying the experiences and the emotional responses puts you in control and gives you the potential to improve your customers’ experiences and their relationship with your brand.
Vetyver offer the full range of sensory services for hotels including signature scents, candles, toiletries, ambient scent, signature food, ambient sound, tone of voice guidelines to name but a few. Having worked with many hotels over the years, such as The Savoy, Raffles, Jumeirah, Waldorf and Bespoke, we understand hotels and your guests.
Turn your hotel into a sensory paradise your guests will remember forever.
For a more detailed description of our offering, and for a breakdown on the potential of the each of the five senses in this area, please download our Sensory Hotels Report.
For more information on the Sensory Audit, please email us at feel@vetyver.co.uk.
A sensory home: multi-sensory dining and sound /
We have been exploring how we can use simple tricks turn our homes into a multi-sensory paradise. Drawing from our experience working with brands and companies we are sharing our knowledge and modifying some of our work for everyday use. Considering our own personal multi-sensory environment can make an incredible difference to the way we live. Last time we looked at smell and how candles can add value to your dining experience. This time, we are staying in the kitchen and dining room, but concentrating on our ears.
Experiments have shown that people enjoy a drink more when listening to music. Simply playing something can make the difference. Curated music and bespoke soundscapes are big part of the work we do to help companies improve their brand experience, and many of these elements can be adapted for home use.
People are more likely to engage in an experience if they think it is authentic. When listening to a soundscape specific sounds become aligned with a past experience and so authenticated by our brains. Memory is powerful and certain songs and sounds drip with potential narratives and associative power. Why not serve ice-cream with the sound of the sea to take your guests back to their childhood holidays. Or bring an Italian feast to life with the authentic sounds of Rome clattering away in the background.
Or, as we did when we in our workshops with IKEA, used the sound of the forest to compliment woodland foods such as mushrooms or venison.This creates a connection to the origins of the ingredients.
Soundscapes can bring certain flavours to the forefront. In a research project for a beer company, we found in our focus group that the sound of wind running through barley helped people focus on this element of the flavour during the tasting. We can think of sound as an ingredient in our cookery, bringing certain parts of the recipe to the forefront.
It’s important to consider volume. Loudness has been proven to directly affect our perception of flavour. As music increases in volume, we tend to think of things as less sweet, we also tend to notice taste less and eat more. So turn down the tunes if you want people to enjoy the subtle flavours of your lemon souffle. Turn it up for curry night!
Tempo encourages people to eat more quickly or slowly and pitch plays its part as well. Listening to music of a higher pitch means people perceive things as sweeter. Play a lower pitch sound, and people report their food to be more bitter. A nice idea is to create a playlist for your evening which takes the courses you are serving into consideration. This is a less intimidating than maybe pumping in the sound of the a Moroccan souk over people trying to enjoy your tagine!
People tend to make judgement of quality taste based on their perceived quality of the music they are listening to and research suggests that this goes beyond personal taste. So sophisticated high quality recordings can make all the difference. Classical music may impress your guests with your sophistication and taste anyway, but it might also be improving the taste of your food.
We all eat, several times a day so, it makes sense to make the most of this time, either having fun with your family, or impressing your dinner guests. Music and soundscapes are a really nice way to add a sense of occasion to a mealtime and they do not need to interfere with the conversation. In fact, they will add to it if they are added with careful consideration.
Music is easily available and free, and soundscapes too are easily purchased or streamed online. We’d love to hear from you about some of your suggestions for what pairings work, and don't.
Unleashing the Power in Creative Agencies /
The senses are powerful tools demanding physical and emotional responses and appealing directly to instinct, memory and emotions. So it's not surprising that we work a lot with agencies to unleash those powerful tools, all of which work at the heart of creativity and communications.
Our Sensory Workshops explore narratives, storytelling, briefs and creativity in completely new ways by stimulating different parts of the brain, by pressing different sensory buttons.
We also do Sensory 'Surgeries', working with agencies on concepts and pitches to add new dimensions to their work and their presentations.
We get asked all sorts of wonderful questions from agencies and we love it. "can you re-create Rome through sound and smell", "can you make the music smell?", "create a multi-sensory art installation", "design an experience to make beer taste different", "compose music for this digital experience", "can you make it smell like formula 1" well, yes we can. And we can also present talks and workshops about sensory design for clients and run multi-sensory experiences for PR and public events.
Sensory consideration can benefit brands in surprising ways, even if there is not an obvious sensorial/experiential angle. Our experience is with all the senses and understanding how they work together. Vetyver offer that extra dimension. Give us a call and let us spark and idea you have not thought of yet or bring to life one you have.
Soundscapes. Music. Smells. Multi-sensory Experiences & Events. Workshops. Audits. Talks. Ideas and much more. Contact feel@vetyver.co.uk and download some top sensory tips
Sensory Virtual Reality /
Image by Nan Palmero Creative Commons 2.0 licence
We are increasingly asked about virtual reality which spurred us to think seriously about how it relates to sensory experience and the potential for this emerging group of technologies. How can sensory design be used to improve the overall VR experience?
Reality itself is essentially virtual: it's what our brain tells us is real from the received sensory inputs. So it follows that true immersive VR needs to pay attention to all of the senses.
VR headsets from the likes of Oculus, Samsung and others have been getting a lot of attention. The technology is progressing at a pace, but, with the exception of a few prototypes, they focus on our ability to SEE and HEAR the world around us. The bulky gear almost entirely covers the face, concentrating on these senses, obscuring and confusing others and even contributing to motion sickness. It’s worth considering whether this is the ‘reality’ you want your customers to associate with your brand.
Smell, taste, touch, temperature, balance, wind, perception of depth and many lesser known senses contribute to an engaging experience. And the technology for these seems a long way off.
At Vetyver, authenticity is important to us and when considering VR for a project, this is at the forefront of our thoughts.
The best examples of VR go beyond the video game extension style headset. They harness the power of technology to tell a story and are not led by it. Good VR draws on the qualities which are important for us in all our work be this storytelling, sound design, scent and the way that all of them combine. To give a couple of examples, this installation from Nick Ryan is truly transportative in two senses of the word. And The Guardian have cleverly used a deceptively simple VR experience of a prison cell to accentuate artful sounds design and storytelling.
Is VR the right choice? You want to create moments of joy for your customers which are authentic, memorable and in tune with your brand values. In any situation, be this shop, exhibition or in bar experience, you want your customers completely emerged in your brand and your values. Is a headset experience doing this? There is a danger of you becoming a shop window for the hardware.
New VR technology is fun and we will certainly enjoy pushing it to to the limits of its potential. We are a long way away from a virtual world which comes anything close to the real one. For us, authenticity will always be the ultimate aim.
Sometimes, the thing which smells most like a lemon, is well, a lemon. Take a step back. How do you want your brand to FEEL?
To chat about Sensory Virtual Reality email us at feel@vetyver.co.uk
Photo by Matt Biddulph under creative commons 2.0
A sensory home: multi-sensory dining and scent /
Following last month's workshops for IKEA as part of the The Dining Club, we are publishing a series of posts to help make the most of your home by using some clever sensory hacks. With no mention of molecular gastronomy, we are sharing some of the skills we have learnt over the years working with brands to make the most of spaces and to tell their stories using all of the senses.
In this blog, we are going to concentrate on smell and how this can affect the experience of eating, one of the most inherently multisensory experiences we engage in day-to-day. Taste is, after all, almost 90% smell and so smell can dramatically alter your enjoyment of food.
Candles are now commonplace in our homes. They range in price from from a couple of pounds to a couple of hundred pounds, are accessible to everyone and are very effective at setting mood. There are hundreds of options of flavours now available, from lemon or lavender, from iMac to bacon. They are most commonly found in the living room, bedroom and bathroom but that isn't a reason not to consider them in the kitchen - or garden or toolshed or office for that matter!
We are often commissioned to explore how science, psychology and cross-modal responses can affect the senses, in commercial environments and campaigns. We know well that scent is an intrinsic part of the taste experience. The science of understanding how different flavours and aromas interact and influence each other is relatively new to science (believe it or not there are still competing scientific ideas about how the nose even works) but there is still a lot we can do. Setting the science aside, trust your intuition and to go with what works for you. Chefs have been doing this for centuries, using their finely developed taste to go come up with radical new combinations of flavours.
Pair scents with flavours
If you are using scent in close proximity to food, consider it as an additional ingredient. Pick combinations that will compliment each other. Would you add the heady aroma of Gardenia to beef? We wouldn’t, but would you add rose or lemon to a Moroccan Lamb Harissa? Yes. Choosing a Moroccan rose candle with a hint of frankincense could transport your tagine, and your guests, to the souks of Marrakesh. Which brings us to the next aspect of pairing scent with food - using scent to create a connection to the origin and style of the food.
Connecting with your food
Where does your food come from? What season is it? What country and culture does the recipe reflect? Scent can enhance your connection with your food and your enjoyment of it.
The Swedish woodland served as our inspiration for our tasting workshop for IKEA and we found some beautiful woodland mushrooms to cook. The origins of the food inspired us to use fern, moss and pine scents to create a connection back to where the food originated and to give a stronger sense of place and authenticity.
Smell doesn’t need to come from a candle or an artificial source. For our workshop we found moss and pine-cones for the mushrooms and dressed the place setting with them. We squeezed lemon on the mushrooms at the table just before tasting so we could enjoy the scent of lemon zest before tasting the mushrooms.
Be unique
So that’s just a few ideas to hopefully get your noses watering as well as your tastebuds. Our advice is to experiment, relax and have fun. Play around and see what works for you, what doesn’t, and keep mixing it up. Immerse your guests in scent and this will go a long way towards creating a meal they will remember for many years.
If you have had particular successes, or failures, we’d love to hear about it.
There are currently no public sessions planned but do follow us on twitter to keep up to date with what we have coming up. And if you are interested in an event or project please get in touch.
See Also
A sensory home: an introduction /
Earlier this month Vetyver ran a series of workshops for IKEA as part of the The Dining Club, a pop-up event in Shoreditch. As part of their #makemorethanjustfood concept, we were asked to host a series of sensory eating workshops.
We normally help companies create unique and powerful sensory brand experiences and events, but this time our workshops were designed to explore how we engage with the senses at home. It was fascinating working with, tasting and exploring the senses with the participants and we had a great response so over the next few weeks, we are going to explore how to engage the senses at home with some ideas and tips.
It’s important to understand that we experience all the senses at once. The key to creating a successful sensory experience is understanding that the senses are interlinked. They work very closely together and they shouldn’t be considered in isolation. Think of it like a graphic equaliser - if all the ‘sensory volumes’ are up at the same time, you get overload. Consider eating: if the sound is loud, your perception of taste will be diminished. If the beat or tempo is fast you will probably eat faster, and more. So your sensory environment completely affects the way that you eat or drink.
To give an example, have you ever enjoyed a glass of table wine in on holiday and taken it home only to discover it no longer tastes like divine nectar? We have, but why? Because the colour palette, soundscape, temperature, scent and beauty surrounding you entirely change your perception of taste.
So no matter whether you live in a tower block, house or boat; in the city or the wilderness, with strangers, animals, friends or your family, join us in exploring how to make your home your sensory sanctuary.
Over the next few weeks we will be showcasing some of what you can do to bring the joy of taste, smell, touch, sound and sight to your home. Keep and eye on twitter for updates.
See Also
IKEA: Sensory Eating /
Vetyver are delighted to be running a series of workshops for IKEA as part of the The Dining Club, a pop-up event taking place in London in September.
We will join the likes of Great British Bake off winner Edd Kimber, food blogger Pixie Turner and Instagram hits symmetry breakfast in presenting a series of masterclasses.
Our sensory eating workshop is an introduction multi-sensory thinking and design with a focus on practical demonstrations and advice for getting maximum enjoyment from food and eating at home.
We will guide you though a number of multi-sensory scenes and demonstrate how light, scent, colour, sounds, culture and storytelling all affect how we taste and experience our food. It’s a hands-on affair with lots of opportunity to get stuck in. Learn how to create the best environment in your home and get maximum enjoyment from your mealtimes.
Three workshops are open to the public and ticket availability can be found here.
Availability is limited, so we will be following up our sessions with a series of blog posts addressing some of the ideas we cover in the workshops.
The Dining Club by IKEA
From Saturday the 10th to Sunday the 25th of September, IKEA is inviting kitchen novices, wannabe-cooks and fine-diners alike, The Dining Club by IKEA is a DIY pop-up restaurant where you're the chef. Featuring an IKEA cafe serving Swedish delicacies, inspiring workshops, a virtual reality kitchen and a unique shop so you can take home a piece of the experience. budding foodies who score a spot at the Shoreditch-based club will be able to prepare, cook and serve a meal for up to 20 of their friends, with all food, drink and even waiting staff provided by the retailer.