The Smell of Memory with scent designer Dawn Goldworm

0:01When I say the word brand, what comes to mind? Bright colors, a cute mascot, a logo, maybe a jingle. What you probably don't think of is scent. And scent happens to be Dawn Goldworm's favorite subject. Dawn is the founder and CEO of 1229, a company that helps businesses create unique signature scents, scents that build memories. She works with some of the biggest names in fashion, automotive, sports apparel, hospitality, even a theme park or two, to craft fragrances that allow customers to experience the brand in a deeper, more meaningful way. And as you'll hear, there's a lot more to composing a scent from scratch than you think.

0:46This is a bit of optimism. Dawn, thanks for joining me on the old podcast. It's fun to have you on because I think what you do is so fun and so special. just to give people a little context for how I know you and how we met. You and I, by sure coincidence, were seated at the same table at some event a lot of years ago. And I had heard your presentation that day about using scent for branding. And I thought your presentation was amazing. Thank you. And by sure coincidence, we were seated next to each other at the dinner. And I leaned over to you and I said, could you scent a book? Is that possible?

1:23And you went, yes, that's possible. And I said, has it ever been done before? And you said, no, I don't think so. I said, I would like to scent a book. And this became the beginning of a partnership and friendship of the two of us. Yes. And for those of you who have ever read my book, Together is Better, spoiler alert, because we've always kept it a secret, so it's a little surprise for people who buy it, but the book is scented. And you developed that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism. Yes, it is the smell of you. The smell of me, the smell of my personality. Right. So first of all, let's go back down memory lane.

2:00You are what is called a nose, meaning you develop scents for a living. And you have been doing this for how long? I started in my early 20s in perfumery school. A long time. Like a quarter of a century. Okay. Ouch. So this, I assume, for most people who are noses, perfume is the direction you generally go in. Yes, you can go into fine fragrance, which is perfume for skin. You can go into ancillaries like body wash, shampoo, etc. You can go into home care, laundry detergent. You can also become a flavorist and develop flavors, which is the same industry. Most people don't know that. The taste of Coca-Cola, Dan and yogurt, everything that we put into our mouth is flavored by the same people that create fragrance.

2:44But in general, the perfumery school that I went to, you would become a fine fragrance perfumer for skin. Okay, so perfumes that you buy. Traditional. Traditional perfume. then what is the path because you worked at the highest levels I mean you were working perfumes for names that we know I worked for Cody for almost 10 years and I did everything from Lady Gaga to Adidas to the Beckhams most of the mass market fragrances in the United States and a lot in the rest of the world sure so if you ever wore Lady Gaga's perfume you were the one who developed that I did which is kind of cool let's that's very cool actually you developed the smell of Lady Gaga sure um okay so how do you go from what i would call a fairly traditional successful career as a nose in a in a perfume direction to really pioneering because you are a pioneer in this space really pioneering leaving perfume to make sense for brands like how did that even happen i'll be honest with you in all the years i've known you i actually have no idea how that you went from that to the other thing?

3:47You know, when I, um, when I had my nose tested, I was, I was finishing up graduate school in London. I was an art history major. And then I did a master's in art business. I thought I was going to be in the art world and it didn't turn out that way. And I interned at Avon when I was young. And then someone from Avon called me and said, Hey, we have a spot. You want to work for us? And I wasn't sure, but I came back to New York and she sent me into a perfumery school and I had my nose tested. I had no idea that I had this innate ability, which is, by the way, like any ability, 5%, and then it's 95 % blood, sweat, and tears after to learn how to use it.

4:20And I fell in love with it. I fell so deeply in love with it that when I started developing fragrance for skin, I was like, there has to be more. It has to be more than just applying it to skin. And so I went back to graduate school at NYU in the evenings while I was in perfumery school in the morning, working at Cody at this point during the day and I started looking into the psychology behind scent, the sociology around scent, behavioral aspects behind scent, anything that I could tap into, consumer identities, studies, anything I could find. And then I made it into a business case. I was like, what if brands could apply scent and have that same emotional bond that we do and we apply it to our skin or to our babies or to our house?

5:01And this is how it was born. And I think people don't realize that the sense most closely connected to memory is smell. Oh, yeah. So if you think about how you process the other senses, so if you think about your sense of sight, your sense of touch, your sense of taste, your sense of hearing, once you get that input, it has to go through many neural pathways to get to the place in the brain that comprehends what it actually just heard or felt or saw. Your nose, odor molecules kind of float around the outside of your nose. They go up your nose, and at the top of your nose is the only place that your brain is exposed to air.

5:39And so the automata cues go right up to your limbic system. It's a super highway. No stop and go, no collecting$200. There's nothing else that happens. And then once it gets to your limbic system, the only other two things that happen there are emotion and memory. And so every time you smell something, from the time you're born, and actually a little bit before you're born, to 10 years old, every time you smell something, you have a feeling about it. They're both novel experiences you're having. and they become linked together and forever married, floating in your olfactory memory, which becomes the largest and most acute part of your memory.

6:14So later in life, every time you smell something, you're immediately brought back to that first moment you smelled it, and more importantly, that first feeling. And I often say, I'm not creating a scent, I'm creating an emotional resonance for you. And it's so true, right? It's like, I mean, I go into a space and it smells like my grandparents' house smelled, which was a pretty unique smell. My grandfather worked as an engineer, And so the smell of sort of like industrial lubricant, like was on him at all times. And they were antiques dealers. So there was like a mustiness and an old house, an old Victorian house.

6:45And that all came together to be the smell of grandma and grandpa's house, which wasn't a bad smell. It was a beautiful smell and, but quite unique. So true. When you talk about this, that's so fascinating. And it creates a loyalty. So when you apply it as a business case to a brand, you can help create that emotional bond that the brand is trying to create through all the other touch points that you mentioned. And that's what creates the loyalty. That's so interesting. So if I have a good experience in a store that you have scented, then I can be reminded of that experience somewhere else. If I smell similar notes somewhere else.

7:19And if you buy whatever product the store is selling and it's scented, when you're at home, all you're going to think about is returning to that store and buying more. Is that manipulative? So this is the way that smell works. So it's it's conditioned, right? So depending on your culture, your generation and your living environment, like I was saying, you smell different ingredients, different fragrances, and they're linked to different emotional experiences you're having. So the first time your mother is holding you, you feel safe, hopefully, you feel loved, hopefully, and you're smelling her breast milk, you're smelling maybe some kind of baby product, which is cultural, and it changes on different places in the world.

7:57So lavender isn't a thing for all cultures to make them feel safe and tired, as people think it is. Spray lavender on your pillow. That won't work for the entire east of the world. No kidding. Yeah, it only works for certain parts of Europe, certain parts of the United States, and some of South America. Only because when we were babies, somebody sprayed lavender? No, it's because there's lavender in baby products. There's lavender in baby products. And it's a cultural phenomenon. Like in the south of France, they use orange blossom. They don't use it at all in Asia. So orange blossom makes somebody feel relaxed.

8:23So it's all based on that. No kidding. So when you're running on the beach as a kid, hopefully your parents put sunblock on you. Right. You're feeling fun for the first time. You're feeling free. That smell of whatever that sunblock was, Hawaiian tropic, let's say, or coconut. But again, it's cultural. So in Europe, they use a different flower. they don't use coconut and pineapple like we use here. They will use something else, a narrowly, for instance. And so that would make people feel like the beach there versus here. Totally different. Wow. And this is all based on generation as well. So products have changed every 10 years.

8:54And with the globalization of product, it's gotten a lot mixed up. For example, for example. It's very layered. This is very interesting. So I understand the cultural element. Tell me something where a smell for one generation is no longer relevant for a different generation. Well, with the invention of plastic. So toys used to be made out of wood. Right. So anyone that was born, let's say, up to definitely in the 1940s, post-1940s when you started seeing plastic, toys started to be made out of plastic. And so when people would smell wood, they would think of their childhood. Not anymore. Not anymore.

9:27Tell me another one. This is so good. CO2 off-gases, my favorite topic. Go on. So the way that sneakers are made, Everyone thinks that they're smelling leather, they're smelling rubber, they're smelling adhesives is mostly what they're smelling. And they're smelling the breakdown of all these ingredients once they're made and they're heated up and put in a box. And so when you open a new box of sneakers, a lot of what you're smelling is these off gases. And people love the smell because they feel like it's newness and luxury. And I put it in so many fragrances. So wait a minute. I have to say this again.

10:00So it's the leather, the rubber and the glue. It's the viatol molecules that break down once they're all put together. What's a viatol molecule? Molecules that disperse. They don't stay inside of a product. They float around so you can smell them. Okay, so the reason I can smell leather when I'm not right up close to it... Because there's a whole bunch of viatol molecules coming off of it. Because there's all these molecules that are coming off of the leather. But you know leather doesn't actually smell like leather. What? Well, it's the skin of an animal. It smells like a dead animal. We treat it to smell like leather.

10:26We... What? So then why does all leather smell like leather? Have you ever smelled a cow? Yeah, they don't smell good. That's where leather comes from. Did they design the smell of leather? Like, did leather smell the same 200 years ago as it smells now? Yes and no. So Catherine de' Medici was the first one to create commercial perfume in Florence. She came through Grasse, which is the historical home of perfume, because Grasse was the center of leather. And they would scent saddles, and they would scent gloves in Grasse. You know, no one wanted to smell like a dead animal on top of another animal, which would have been very strange.

11:01And then she came to Paris and then the center of perfume, you know, around the, let's say, latter 1800s began the 1900s. Paris became the commercial center of perfume. And so all leather smelled the same because it was all done in the same place, essentially. And is that the smell today? I actually don't know the answer to that. But I would assume it's close, but probably not the same. So what do we add to make the smell of leather? This is so interesting to me. So there's no ingredient that smells like leather. It's an accord, essentially. So it's these little tiny formulas we make up to make something smell like something.

11:33So I've never actually broken down the accord of leather. Aha, I like it. I've given you a challenge. You have. Now I feel like I'm going to go back into it. So this is the thing that I like, just to go off, I need to come back to this, but before I do, as you talk about accord, it's the same as a chord in music. Yes, exactly. It's exactly the same thing. So we have notes and then we have chords. So we have notes, which would be our ingredients, which are raw materials that could be natural, or we call them molecules, which are synthetically made by scientists. And then we make them into accords, which are a small amount of notes.

12:07It could be anywhere between two and, I don't know, seven. Because I love the way you think about, you talk about scent. You say color, there's only three primary colors. That's it. In music, there's only seven notes. That's it. And it's how Beethoven organizes and combines those notes that make a symphony. It's how Van Gogh organizes and mixes those three primary colors that you get the magic of a Van Gogh. And there's only a finite number of notes for scent. And it's how you combine them into chords or accords and use them that makes things flowery, magical, vanilla-y, whatever. Absolutely. When I started training, there was about 4 ,500.

12:45There was a lot. 4 ,500, which is much more than three primary colors or seven notes. Now there's about 1 ,500. A lot of them have been taken off the palate for a variety of reasons. The fragrance industry by nature is sustainable. And so we take a lot of things from the earth and we're very careful with how much we take from the earth. We constantly think about how we can regenerate. It's unlike food where they can make mass amounts of food and kind of ruin the soil. So there's no nutrients or smell or taste in food. We can't do that. Our flour needs to smell the same year over year or as close to it as we can make it.

13:17And so the soil has to stay very nutrient-rich and dense so that we can produce the ingredients that we need. So we have about 1 ,500 that we use today. Let's go back to that box of sneakers. So there's scent coming off of the artificial leather smell, which is the smell of leather for all leather. There's the scent coming off of the rubber. There's the scent coming off of the glue in a hot box, in a truck, on a ship. It's been sitting in the cardboard. And the cardboard smell. And the cardboard smell as well. It's all been sitting in there. And if there's any plastic on the shoelaces, remember?

13:49Yeah, all of that. So it's all sitting in there and being focused and condensed because it's in a box, not with no ability to escape. And then you open it and we're hit with that combination because new sneaker smell is a unique and specific smell. You know, when I worked with Nike, they wanted the smell of Air Force One. Okay. They didn't want Air Max. They didn't want Jordans. They wanted the smell of Air Force One specifically, which smells different than the other two. Because of the amount of it. leather the glue that all the combination of the materials right that is so brilliant because we the the magic of getting this new thing and being hit by it as you said it's not innate it's cultural where we then learn that that smell is the magic of a new pair of sneakers which means you can recreate artificially and you can pump it into a store did you do that for nike what is that i did do that for nike so tell me what did you do so what how did nike use how does nike use smell so artificially produced like the way you do it not just you know stuff in a box i have to say today, we don't work with Nike, but we did for years.

14:50This is pre-COVID. So Nike was an incredible challenge for me. Talk about a challenge. And I love a good challenge. Nike was, still is, one of the biggest brands in the world. And so when I do what I did for you, as you know, I look very much at the target market. Who are you talking to? With Nike, their target market is enormous. But at the time when they designed everything, it was designed for a 17-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy, but still all over the world. So we talk about cultural conditioning, China, Brazil, Germany, New York, the entire world. How do you do that? And so when I was looking at this, I was like, okay, but Nike's emotion, as everyone knows, is inspiration.

15:29And so I was like, okay, what inspires these 17 year old girls and 19 year old boys all over the world? And so I worked with Nike for about two years and I did a bunch of Nike experiences. Nike has its own soccer pitches. They have their own basketball courts. They have, I designed a pair of shoes with one of their big shoe designers. Like I did so many things. And what I realized it's the smell of sport. It's the feeling of about to play a sport that is the inspiration. And so we recreated the smell of a soccer cleat in dirt. We have a dirt molecule, a grass molecule, and the smell of the shoe, which is a mixture of metal and leather and sweat.

16:06We recreated the smell of a basketball as it gets oily from your hand. We recreated the sound of a pair of sneakers when you skid on a basketball court. The linoleum and the rubber heat up and create a very fascinating smell that everyone knows. So when the squeak happens, a smell happens. Because it warms up and it releases off gases. And those vital molecules have a very specific smell. Yes, yes, yes. And you can smell it when you're at a basketball game. We recreated the smell of when you're at the gym and you're sweating and your sweat mixes with that rubber on the gym equipment. Sure. And then we took the smell of a pair of Air Force One when you open the box.

16:43And then we add a little bit of magic, which we don't talk about. And that was the smell of Nike. And what is fascinating about it. We took all of those smells. And put them together. They're all accords. They're all accords. And we put them together. I hate to say it, and I know this is a naive thing to say, but if I took my favorite phrase from a police song and my favorite phrase from a Beatles song and my favorite phrase or chord from a Beethoven symphony, put them all together, what I'll get is noise. So how is all of these things, the cleats, the oily basketball, the smell, how is that not a nasal mess?

17:15Have you ever seen a Monet? Yeah. How many colors are in a Monet? Fair point. Same thing. If you know how to layer sound, if you know how to layer color and texture and aesthetic, you do the same thing with smell. There are anywhere between three and up 200 plus ingredients in a perfume. These are the shortest formulas pretty much in the industry. I don't like to make complex formulas, but they're accords. They're little accords that all go together, and together they make a symphony. So where would I smell the smell of Nike? Because I'm dying to smell the smell. They used it in all the Nike labs and all the private member spaces.

17:47We did send shopping bags at one point and I think shoelaces. But what's fascinating about Nike is we still show it today when we're working with a new client or just hanging out with someone that wants to smell. I want to smell. And they smell it, and I don't tell them what it is. and they say, sneakers, grass. This is Nike. They don't say Puma. They don't say Adidas. They don't say Reebok. They don't say any other sneaker brand. They just say Nike, which is fascinating. And it's the Air Force One piece. And I used to say to people, they're like, oh, I love the smell of the Nike store. I'm like, what do you think?

18:19Basketballs are just like giving off scent? I mean, yes, of course. There's like viatrol molecules around basketballs, but not of that level. And not enough that you would have a scent experience in a store. So interesting. Are there scents, are there particular scents that are universally around the world liked and universally around the world disliked? Yes. There's one for each. Only one? Only one. So there's one smell in the entire world that everybody likes? Yes. Which is what? Vanilla. It is, it is really good. And you know why? Vanilla is really good. Do you know why it's vanilla? Because it smells like cookies.

18:51No. There's a lot of part of the words that don't eat cookies. Vanilla is the chemical sister of an ingredient called vanillin. and vanillin occurs in breast milk. And if you weren't breastfed and you had formula, they reproduce that smell for formula. So whether it's natural breast milk or formula, you get something that is close to vanilla, which is why we all love vanilla because it's basically babyhood. It reminds us of being cuddled and safety and comfort and joy and cookies and mommy and all the good things. That's so good. You know what the bad smell is? I don't. Do you want to know? I mean, it's got to be something putrid.

19:30Like what? I mean, the most putrid thing I can think of. I mean, like the list of putrid would be like sewage, rutting things, rutting meat, things like that. Well, if you work in a meat factory, it's not going to be a bad smell for you. You're conditioned. If you work in the sewers in India, for instance, there's a whole case of people that do, cast, excuse me, of people that do. It's their daily lives. Remember, this is all conditioning. so there's one smell that everyone has to have the same visceral reaction to which is the smell of a decaying body the smell of a decaying body body human oh human and a human decaying body smells different than a dying cow than a dead cow yes i guess that makes sense well we eat dead cow don't we but but i get it because the things that make up a cow are different than the things that make up a person wow so it is that is a that is a universally people love vanilla and hate the smell of a dead human body.

20:23And so the Defense Department trains people against the smell of a decaying body so they don't freak out once they start, once they go into war or into battle. Because it's so horrible. Because it's so bad. And they can't have them like all of the sudden, all of, you know, the Army or the Navy or the SEALs or whoever it is, you know, starting to have this visceral action and getting sick. They need to just go right through it. And so they get trained olfactively. They also use it as a weapon of war. They just spray it. and make people feel sick. Disoriented, because you get disoriented, you have a really visceral reaction to it.

20:55You don't know what to do, because you want to get as far away from it as possible. I've smelled, I mean, we used stink bombs when we were kids. Not me, of course, but I was around them. Of course you didn't. No, I actually was a goody-goody. That actually is not an exact, that's actually not sarcasm, actually. But I have been around them. And it's rotten eggs. You know, the traditional child stink bomb is rotten eggs, and it's gross. And it makes you run in the opposite direction, because it smells gross. But in Greece, there's whole islands of Greece that smell sulfuric, and they don't think anything of it.

21:24And they take the food and they bake it in the sand, which, by the way, if you've never done it, is so good. The vegetables come out so delightful. But it smells like sulfur. No one thinks anything of it. I have to tell you a funny smell story. So when I was a kid, I lived in Hong Kong, and I used to collect stickers. And my sister and I had a bunk bed, and I had the bottom bed. And so the whole inside of my bed was my sticker collection. So I would stick my stickers all inside my bed. And I had some scratch and sniff stickers. People would give me stickers and I would put them randomly. And somebody gave me skunk scratch and sniff stickers.

21:57And the space that I had was like right by where my face was. And I'd never smelled a skunk my whole life because I'd never lived anywhere where skunks existed. There's no skunks in Hong Kong. There's no skunks in Hong Kong. I don't think so. At least they weren't back then. Fascinating. So I'm nine or ten years old and I've never smelled a skunk my whole life. So I have no idea if this sticker is accurate or not accurate, right? So I, as a child, would scratch the sticker and fall asleep next to the skunk sticker. And then I moved to America. We moved to America when I was 10. And living in suburban New Jersey for the first time in my life, I smelled a skunk.

22:35And everybody else was holding their nose and found it putrid. And I thought it was delightful. I thought it was great because it's the smell of childhood. And it was a beautiful memory of me lying in my bunk bed in Hong Kong. And to this day, the smell of a skunk not only does it not bother me, I find it quite sweet, actually. See? And so it's all cultural. It's cultural, generational, because you had scratch and sniff stickers, which don't really exist anymore. So by the way, the sticker was exactly the smell of a skunk. It was exactly correct. It's the exact smell. Right. Exactly. That's so funny.

23:08And it's also based on your living environment. So if you live in an urban or a rural living environment. So like the smell of cow, for instance, cow dung. If someone lives in a rural environment, they don't think anything of it. And so if they would go to Central Park, for instance, and they would smell horse dung or horse manure, they're like, oh, and smell my childhood. But other people are like, oh, my God, what's that smell? Whereas as a New Yorker, the smell of garbage I find unoffensive. But the smell of cows, absolutely awful. Yeah, exactly. So it's the same. Got it. It's all culturally appropriate, except for those two smells on either end.

23:43Except that's so interesting. So if you want to give a gift to somebody who lives in a foreign land, a candle, for example, if you want to say thank you for letting me stay at your house, make sure to buy vanilla. You're more likely to get warm gratitude if you give them vanilla. Yes. As opposed to you guessing, I'm going to give them this lavender one. It's nice and relaxing and they might find it boring. Or they just don't understand the smell. And that's the interesting thing with smell. So if you don't have an experience with smell the first 10 years of your life, and then you smell it later in life, you'll automatically reject it because you don't have an emotional reaction for it.