Steak-Scented Billboard Entices Drivers

In addition to car exhaust and road grime, travelers along Highway 150 in North Carolina can now enjoy the smell of a barbecue thanks to a new billboard. The work of ScentAir, which provides custom scents for businesses, the advertisement for a local grocer emits the smell of charcoal and black pepper over the highway. "Marketing director Murray Dameron said the beef scent was emitted by a high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard that blows air over cartridges loaded with BBQ fragrance oil. 'It smells like grilled meat with a nice pepper rub on it,' he explained."

Comments

Re:A Scentsor?

[Shadow Wrought]

AFAIK, the easy part is generating the smell. The difficult part is how to move from one smell to another. Once the speakers stop, the sounds waves stop propogating almost immediately. But a smell will still be lingering. I believe they tried this with some movie houses back in the 50's (billed as Smell-O-Vision probably:-) and they just couldn't get one smell out of the theatre in time for the next one.

I'm also pretty sure I don't want to think about how some web sites would actually use such technology for generating a profit.