Podcast

Jun 9, 2026

Harnessing Scent in Brand Strategy with Tiffany Rose Goodyear

IN CLEAR FOCUS: Tiffany Rose Goodyear, founder of Scentex, explores scent in brand strategy. Because olfaction bypasses rational thought and links directly to emotion and memory, it offers an unmatched opportunity for connection. Learn why Western culture historically ignored smell, how color theory informs fragrance design, and how to execute immersive scentscapes at live events. Discover how to move beyond sight and sound to create multi-sensory experiences that drive real action.

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Scent is fun, scent is amazing, scent is what makes us human. And I think in the digital age, especially with AIs that are not human, it is more important now than ever to connect ourselves with our own bodies and other people's actual physical bodies.

Adrian Tennant: You're listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising, produced weekly by BigEye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, BigEye's Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Most marketers invest significant resources into what audiences see and hear, but little, if anything, into what they smell. Of our five senses, olfaction is the only one that bypasses rational thought and connects directly to the limbic system, the part of the brain governing memory and emotion. Research suggests we remember approximately 35% of what we smell, compared to just 5% of what we see. Yet, Scent remains largely absent from most marketing and event design strategies. My guest today is changing that. Tiffany Rose Goodyear is the founder and CEO of Scentex, a Denver-based event services company specializing in custom scentscaping for corporate events, galas, and brand activations. She holds a master's degree in advertising management from the University of Denver and brings a rare combination of fragrance expertise and strategic marketing experience to her work. Ahead of today's conversation, Tiffany very kindly sent me the same sample kit she sends to prospective clients, and I'll be referencing it as we chat. So, to discuss why scent is both the most powerful and most overlooked sense in the brand marketer's toolkit, the neuroscience behind olfactory memory, and how immersive fragrance strategy can deepen audience connection, I'm delighted that Tiffany is joining us today from Denver, Colorado. Tiffany, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Thank you so much, Adrian. I'm so excited to be here and bring scent into focus.

Adrian Tennant: Well, Tiffany, you have a master's degree in advertising management and spent years working in the ad industry before founding Scentex. What led you from advertising to scent design?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Well, the big step between advertising and Scentex is my foray into a cupcake shop. I referred to myself as a reluctant entrepreneur. I thought the day that I graduated from grad school, I would go work at a big agency in a big city, and I would be living my dream life. And then I had started a cupcake concept in Denver that I kind of used as a Petri dish of testing ideas while I was in grad school and business school. And I never meant to have a bakery. It's turned into a bakery. But what I really got to see is how to build a business, but also how to communicate through touch, taste, and smell beyond the advertisers and marketers mostly focus on sight and sound. So I got to really see that putting something in somebody's mouth from a communication point is powerful, and sweets and confections lend themselves to communication more than nutrition. So, I just started witnessing it, and then I started scenting things. I started thinking about just scents, so even getting rid of the idea of touch and taste, along with that communication aspect, and I was scenting spaces and doing research and came to the conclusion that it was underutilized in both events and marketing and advertising, because that's where my mind always go to, is like, how to affect an audience. How do you get people to act?

Adrian Tennant: When we were preparing for this interview, you shared with me that when you talk to brand marketers about multi-sensory strategy, the most common reaction you get is something defensive, as if it were obvious all along. Why do you think such a key aspect of human perception has been so overlooked by the industry?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: So, I think it's been overlooked not just by the industry, and it's been overlooked by the academic canon since the philosophers that we think of shaping human ethics, like Hume and Kant and Kierkegaard, they also decided that scent wasn't worth talking about. It made us closest to the animals, and animals don't have ethics, so we can do without scent, and they didn't discuss it. And then Freud comes along and invents what we know as the western base for psychology. And he also says, in not so many words, scent is not important. It doesn't shape who we are. And he would perform on women that had bad cramps. He would take out a part of their nose. He finally killed a woman, so he stopped performing that surgery. And it's reported that he was anosmic in his old age because he did so much cocaine. So academically, they decided that scent wasn't important. We didn't talk about it. We didn't care about it, right? It makes us closer to the animals. Nobody cares. So, I think all along, for a long period of time, Western culture decided scent wasn't important. And then you think about architecture and modernity. Everything has to be clean. There's not texture. You're getting rid of texture. You're getting rid of stink. Everything's clean. Everything is structured. And scent isn't like that, right? Scent moves around. It does connect us to our humanity. It does connect us to our bodies. And it does connect us to each other. And we've decided over time that scent wasn't important. So in that sense, of course, advertisers aren't thinking about it. And I think we do such a good job with audio-visual. I mean, look at our digital world, right? Look at what we've created that just gets forgotten about. However, we all walk around with noses in the middle of our faces, which is so ironic. And coupled with that, we're not taught to smell either. So, it's like all the culmination of all these things is that like, okay, we're not thinking about scent, we're not using scent. But the second you get somebody to focus for a minute about their favorite scent memories or what they love to smell, it's like their faces light up and they're like, “oh yeah, of course we should be considering this”. Because it is part of the human experience. It is a part of how we interact with the world and create our realities. But the gap is, OK, if that's the case, how do you execute it as well? Right? And I think that is where the scent industry has grown so much. There are a lot more scent marketers than there have ever been, especially in the hospitality industry. You walk into a hotel, there's a scent logo, I would call a lobby scent, and it's associated with the brand. And that's a beautiful thing. And I think it creates a lot of context for our work. But we like to go a step further. In any created environment, scent should be considered.

Adrian Tennant: Well, let's get into the neuroscience. Smell is the only one of our senses where molecules make direct contact with the brain. What does that mean for how we process fragrance, and I guess why should marketers care?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: So the brain has many parts to it. I'm most familiar with the limbic system, which is what is also considered the amphibian brain. It's the oldest part of the brain. It's in the center of the brain. It houses your olfactory, which is where it connects to your olfactory bulbs, through sort of like the back of your nose and throat. And it is where emotion and memory are stored. So, even in a physical sense, it bypasses the part of your brain where rational thinking and language exist. So, I think, as explained, we're not thinking about scent as a culture. We're not taught how to smell. And when we're in the act of smelling, it bypasses, I would say, the most important part of our brains in our current time and culture. We're using our new brains, not our amphibian brains, all the time, every day, talking through this podcast. And the emotion and memory part of it, it's ingrained in us, but we're not thinking about it all the time. And it's hard to describe. It bypasses language. So, I think the reason that it's overlooked from a neuroscience perspective, again, is it's even difficult to talk about. It's difficult to talk about fragrance. We don't have a lot of fragrance words in our culture. In fact, most languages are limited in how to even describe fragrance. So it's overlooked from a perspective of ease and budget.

Adrian Tennant: Well, because we don't have a rich vocabulary for describing scent, the way we do, say, for color or sound, how do you think that linguistic gap affects the way brands and event planners think about smell as a design element?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: I mean, I think they're not thinking about it. But when they do, it's such a beautiful thing. And I think all of our work in communication leads to storytelling in some sense. That's how we connect to each other. It's how we connect to our own memories, is to tell ourselves a story. And I think when you think about storytelling and a narrative and a physical experience, it is about the five senses. So, we all know sort of intuitively that it exists and we can say we have five senses. This is how we experience the world and how to tell the full story is just to give it consideration. Because I think people can relate to their scent memories. Once they tap in, they can see the story. And once you get people talking about it, they can say, “OK, this is the brand story.” What would it smell like? What time of year is it? What season is it? What time of day is it? Or color, what color is it? What does that color smell like? And when you start relating it to your other senses, that story can come alive. It's just about sort of using your imagination in a way, which is awesome and easy. And then the second piece of that is obviously implementation. But once you start smelling things and paying attention, I think most of my clients and a lot of the people that I have the opportunity to speak to, I get the feedback that I think about it now. I think about how I'm going to incorporate it. “Oh, I used your idea for this, and this was the effect. Oh, for scent, this happened.” So, I think the first step is to think about it and then to use our creative brains to tell a story. And then the opportunities present themselves.

Adrian Tennant: Tiffany, when a new client or prospect comes to Scentex, you begin by sending them samples. And I have the package you sent me right here. And I notice they're coded by number rather than by name or a fragrance family. So what's the reasoning behind that?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Well, so to close the loop on our earlier conversation, we have a lot of scent bias. We have a lot of biases anyway. But, when people that don't think about scent, and don't talk about scent, and are immersed in scent, see a scent word, they're off on a memory that they had, whether they like it or they don't like it, and an experience that they had with it, they're no longer smelling. So, to your point, all of our internal branding, everything we do, we try to lead them into an actual in-your-face smelling experience without leading them down a path with a color or a word that suggests that something's in there. As you mentioned, when you start to work with us and we get a little bit further down the path of what the story is you're trying to tell, we send scent samples in a way that you don't know what you're smelling until you open them. Would you like to open one?

Adrian Tennant: I would love to open one.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: So this, what we're smelling is our fragrance sample example. It's not based on any particular event or branding, but it is an opportunity to give people that are curious about how we do business a way to touch, feel, and see our work. So, typically we send these in numerical order. This particular fragrance composition will start best if we smell 1302. And inside is a paper blotter. We've all seen these at the department store.

Adrian Tennant: Here's mine.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Perfect. And we'll smell. One thing that makes our scent sampling, I think, different than any other company that I've received samples from is we leave also room to take notes inside of the package because even though scent is stored in the same part of your brain as your memory, we all have short attention spans. So, always good to take notes on what you smelled, what you like about it, what it sparks in your brain, what it makes you think about. All of the words that should come out of this should be your words. So what are your thoughts on this one, Adrian?

Adrian Tennant: Something maybe citrusy and potentially even a little bit leathery.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Is there a memory that you would like or a space that you've been in that would smell something like this?

Adrian Tennant: Now, you've talked about hotels and hospitality spaces. It reminds me of elevated experiences.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Love that. Well, let's move on to 1407. It would be the next in this series.

Adrian Tennant: There's still some sweetness. There's a barky undertone.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: There is with this one. It's very interesting how that comes through over time. Okay, the next one is going to be 1202, and this is going to give you the clue as to what these fragrances have in common. And if it doesn't, you're still doing it perfectly right.

Adrian Tennant: I am getting a strong cinnamon.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Yes. So, this leads into a gourmand. When we talk about this type of fragrance, it's things you have in your spice cabinet. Also, what makes up every fragrance are top notes, middle notes, and base notes, just like music. So, the first ones we smelled are a little bit more top note heavy than this one. And you can smell that in sort of the weight. I mean, it's a molecular weight and size that makes the difference between a top note and a middle note and a base note. And if you wear any fragrance on your skin, at the end of a day, the base note is all that is still smellable because the top notes and the middle notes will have dissipated. They're the most sort of heady. It's what you smell first in any fragrance. And then it wears to the middle note. And then the deep base notes really ground a fragrance. And if you wear any fragrance on your skin, at the end of a day, the base note is all that is still smellable because the top notes and the middle notes will have dissipated. All right, number four, four for four.

Adrian Tennant: This is very sophisticated and a complex smell. There's many things going on here, but all of it is pleasant.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: It's a little sparkly. I would describe this one as it has a little sparkle to it and coolness almost.

Adrian Tennant: It's not peppermint, but it is cool.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: It is cool. And it's not Eucalyptus, but it could be.

Adrian Tennant: Eucalyptus adjacent.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: So what we've just done together is we've walked through four seasons in fragrance. We started in spring, which was 1302, which was a little floral, which you did say citrus. It's not an overbearing floral. We moved into summer.

Adrian Tennant: Yeah.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: And then fall was the gourmand cinnamony.

Adrian Tennant: Yeah.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: And what we're smelling that is eucalyptus adjacent is actually pine. So thinking about winter and holiday and this experience a year together through fragrance.

Adrian Tennant: Let's take a short break. We'll be right back after this message.

Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I'm talking with Tiffany Rose Goodyear, founder and CEO of Scentex, about why scent may be the most underleveraged tool in the brand marketer's toolkit, and what it actually takes to bring a scentscape to life. There are other companies offering ambient scent services, but Scentex comes from the event world rather than the perfume industry. Tiffany, why does that distinction matter for how you execute a scentscape?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: So, I focus on dynamic experiences as opposed to static experiences. And because there are so many great companies that will send a hotel lobby or an apartment lobby, I think about that as an amazing experience. They're not changing the lighting. They're not changing the decor, unless they're doing a huge renovation. So, in the event and experiential marketing agency, it is a live, one-time-only event. And with that, the location often changes, the lighting changes, the decor changes, the building changes. And so, we believe that the scent should also change and be in consideration of that. The other thing, too, is that we offer gifting associated with an event. So, we just did an event for LinkedIn, and we do a lot of work for tech companies. And I think what's great about that is they're looking for things for their both clients and their internal staff that expands their mind. That's a different, new experience instead of another piece of tech. So, giving people an opportunity to smell, that's what we get to do at these events. Whether it's 100,000 people in a huge convention center or a really intimate, interactive station, inviting people to use their noses is creating that in-real-time experience that is what an event is. And it does read a little bit different than, again, like the scent in a lobby. And so that is what makes us different. And I think coupled with the background of having a dessert catering company and really understanding events, with my advertising and marketing, I come from a perspective of execution live at an event, which can be difficult to execute, but not impossible. And again, the continuation of that guest experience. So, if you're scenting an event a certain way and you want your guests to remember that experience, and that's part of what having an event is, is making sure that it made an impact. And then them being able to take the fragrance home in a re-diffuser and re-experience it, And I think we have great real estate. We give a lot of branded items away. Please, I could never have another water bottle gifted to me for the rest of my life. Water bottles, for example, like that's not an exciting, intimate human experience. But taking the event and what it smells like and being able to put that branded scent in people's homes, in their powder rooms, on their desks, that is like the real value and advantage of using fragrance. And then, if somebody else smells it and asks about it, well, what are they doing? They're talking about your event. They're talking about your brand. And that is so powerful. I mean, again, it's underutilized, but as we're discussing, it makes sense, right? Like, pun intended, like using scent makes sense. And it does to most people once they start thinking about it.

Adrian Tennant: When listeners hear scent design, they may be imagining a small reed diffuser on a reception table. How do you manage a large-scale scentscape such as a 100,000 square foot event space?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: With a magic wand and a prayer! We use commercial equipment and all of our events are staffed. Commercial equipment, commercial grade fragrance oil, so there's no additives or anything like that. These aren't things that you can buy on Amazon. They have a big reach and then part of the work that we do is working within that space to the best of our abilities and then the magic truly does happen live at the event because there are so many things that can change the way airflow happens in a large event, depending on how the guests are moving, what doors are open, the temperature inside the room, the temperature outside of the room. So, it truly is an art that happens in real time. So, we overcome that by using powerful machines. And we have staff that is trained, so we'll make real-time decisions and move things around, if we have to, so that the air flows in the direction of the guests in a perfectly managed way. There is such thing as too much scent. Scent sensitivities are real. Anybody would have a scent sensitivity to standing in front of a commercial diffuser and huffing deep breaths. You're going to feel a certain way. Just like standing next to a speaker that's too loud or staring into an uplight, right? We all have a level of scent sensitivity. But, part of the reason that we love to be on site coordinating this is if you put a piece of our equipment in front of a vent that is sucking up air, you will have wasted your entire scent budget to the clouds that day. So, again, it's making sure that you understand the airflow inside a room in real time and that's how we're able to do it in small spaces and large spaces.

Adrian Tennant: Well, when we were preparing for this interview, you explained to me that a brand's visual palette, especially its colors, can actually inform its fragrance direction. How do you apply that approach when working with a corporate client?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Well, I think about when I was, back in the day many years ago when I was in grad school, and even thinking about colors, people choose for logos, right? Like green, we see green, we think health, we think earthy, we think green, earthy, health, organic. Those are colloquially things that we've associated with green, and rightly so. If you look at our green and blue planet, green is where things are living. Blue's aquatic, right? So blue is the ocean, blue is a lot of tech companies, ironically, so thinking about color theory, yellow, citrus, oranges, these ideas exist in nature and I think that's where we get a lot of it. Woodsy, so you think woodsies are dark, they're heavy, browns, earthy. Right, so I think that scent and color theory can go together and it's a good place to start in thinking about scent design and what brands are gonna be. If anybody listening to this takes a moment and thinks about what they wear, what perfume they wear, what is it about that perfume? What colors do you get out of it just by smelling it? Florals, we think about pinks and purples, and I don't like to gender volatile molecules, but our society likes to gender everything. So, in thinking about it, they're in that context, there are more masculine and more feminine, you know, scents. So, I think taking those things that we already know about scent, we just haven't given it enough time. That's how we start our work, right? We work with a tech client, that their conferences is called Rising, right? So, it's branded and it's rising. So, we really try to think about what does that mean? The sun is rising, right? So, thinking about a fragrance that is uplifting and bright and makes us feel like a beautiful sunrise. Well that's going to lean into more top notes. It's going to lean into more citrus. It's gonna lean, I mean, I think about orange juice, right? Orange juice and mimosas, those are bright, invigorating colors and experiences that also lean into the idea of rising. In thinking about Opfolio, which is a client of ours, their logo is blue. They are a tech company that caters to rental companies. A lot of the people listening to this, I'm one of them, pay their rent through Opfolio. So, for them, it's thinking about home. Right? Even though they have this blue logo, it's about like home space. So, when we do work with them for their apartment building clients or for their conventions for people that own and sell apartment buildings, it's about what does home feel like? Well, it feels warm, right, it feels familiar. So, thinking about scent in terms of where the end user already is going with what you're already giving them as far as brand design and just taking it that one step further into our olfactory.

Adrian Tennant: For a brand marketer listening who wants to bring scent strategy into their next event, where do they start?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Well I would invite anybody that really just wants to start by using your nose. Smell a little bit more, smell the room that you walk into, smell your room right now. The next place you go to just take a deep breath out and then smell through your nose. I would say start thinking about scent in your life would be the very first step. And I always invite people to do that, and I do believe, after people listen to me, they do think about scent a little bit more. The next step would be thinking about the spaces that you're creating where you could actually implement scent. And of course we would love for you to call us, and we'd love to consult with you on it. And thinking about smaller places too, there are smaller apparatus that people can buy. I always recommend planners to do something with the bathroom. At the very least it's a small enclosed space. It's a nice area to sort of experiment with scent and see what happens, right, it's very low risk. And then in thinking about if you're working for a big company with a huge budget, that you're adding this other entire sensory receptor to this entire program, I think you have to do it strategically, right? And then there should be some sort of ROI on thinking about why to do this, the research is there. And then once you start smelling and thinking about it and perhaps implementing it into smaller spaces, then give us a call once you find budget. Just half kidding.

Adrian Tennant: Thinking about the future of Scentex, what are you most excited about?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: It is my life's work to get scent on the event checklist. So, whether that's a product launch, a client event, a convention, a wedding, a baby shower, just again thinking about that as another tool in your toolbox to affect an experience, a branded experience, a home experience and just to get people talking about scent more. Scent is fun, scent is amazing, scent is what makes us human. And I think in the digital age, especially with AIs that are not human, it is more important now than ever to connect ourselves with our own bodies and other people's actual physical bodies. Smell people, smell each other. Like, that sounds crazy, but that's how we find our lovers and our best friends. There's a theory I read, that you'll never be best friends with somebody whose smell you don't like. On a very subconscious level you cannot spend time with people that their smell is off to you. We've all walked into homes, maybe we thought we liked these people, but if something is off smell-wise, we don't want to spend time there. So I think just smelling and using our noses, and I hope somebody that's listening now is having that “aha!” moment. I mean, that would be the goal.

Adrian Tennant: Great conversation. Tiffany, for IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners who'd like to learn more about Scentex or who are curious about receiving the same sample kit you sent me, what's the best way to get in touch?

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: I believe it would be to slide into our DMs on Instagram. It's Scentex Events, that is just a way for us to connect in a very easy method. You can also go to our website. It's www.scent-ex.com. There's a contact us form. If you let us know that you heard me on this podcast, we will ask for your address and we will get these samples shipped out to you. And we would love your feedback on going through our scent exercise, and we'd love to answer any questions that you have too. It really is a whole new world, and with everything we've talked about, the difficulty to describe it, the fact that academically, we're not taught how to smell, we're not taught how to talk about it. I would just say get curious, ask questions, and we're here for you.

Adrian Tennant: Tiffany, thank you so much for being our guest this week on IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Tiffany Rose Goodyear: Such a pleasure. Thank you, Adrian.

Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Tiffany Rose Goodyear, founder and CEO of Scentex. As always, you'll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at bigeyeagency.com. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.

Timestamps

00:00: The Power of Scent in the Digital Age

00:23: Introduction to IN CLEAR FOCUS

00:44: The Overlooked Sense: Olfaction in Marketing

01:27: Meet Tiffany Rose Goodyear

02:22: From Advertising to Scent Design

03:41: The Defensive Reaction to Multi-Sensory Strategy

05:31: Cultural Overlook of Scent

06:49: Neuroscience of Smell and Memory

09:00: The Linguistic Gap in Describing Scent

10:49: Storytelling Through Scent

11:55: Scent Sampling Process

12:29: Exploring Fragrance Samples

15:06: Understanding Fragrance Composition

16:49: Scentex's Unique Approach to Scentscaping

17:20: Dynamic vs. Static Scent Experiences

18:45: Managing Large-Scale Scentscapes

22:13: Color Theory and Scent Design

25:19: Getting Started with Scent Strategy

26:48: The Future of Scentex

28:03: Connecting with Tiffany and Scentex

29:10: Closing Remarks

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