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

BBQ?

[Vinegar Joe]

Screw that! I want BACON!!!

Re:BBQ?

[treeves]

Hey, were you an extra in Wall-E?

Push button, receive bacon

[tepples]

Screw that! I want BACON!!!

For that, all you need is to go into a gas station and use the restroom. Push button, receive bacon.

At first I wondered if it was real...

[Shadow Wrought]

Then I realized that they had not, in fact, made a misteak.

Re:At first I wondered if it was real...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Then I realized that they had not, in fact, made a misteak.

ARGH I hate you for using that stupid pun. I hope the next time you pull out into an intersection you get T-Boned!

Re:At first I wondered if it was real...

[Monkeedude1212]

ARGH I hate you for using that stupid pun.

Really? I thought it was remarkably well done.

Re:At first I wondered if it was real...

[dancingmilk]

Seeing a thread with this many good puns in it is pretty rare.

Re:At first I wondered if it was real...

[Monkeedude1212]

I know! Can you believe someone rolled through and modded us all trolls? What's his beef?

Re:At first I wondered if it was real...

[Hoi Polloi]

Please be serious, this is a meaty subject.

A Scentsor?

[Izabael_DaJinn]

I always wondered why there can't be an electronic way to generate smells, such as how a speaker produces sounds. Is it theoretically possible to ever create a machine or device that can create a variety of scents based on some sort of scent-spectrum? Or are "cartridges loaded with BBQ fragrance oil" the best we'll ever do? (This is one of those questions I have always wondered but been afraid to ask!)

iza

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.

Re:A Scentsor?

[wjousts]

Printer -> 4 colors (3 primaries plus black)

Smell-o-whatever -> several hundred different aroma compounds

That's your problem. There is, as far as anybody's been able to demonstrate, such a thing as a primary odor. You have somewhere in the region of 1000 different odor receptors in your nose but they are mostly non-specific and have overlapping sensitivities that make it next to impossible to reproduce all possible aromas from a small subset of chemicals. Couple that with the fact that aroma chemicals are, by necessity, volatile (otherwise you couldn't smell them) and you have a real problem with shelf-life too. If you had an olfactometer with a few hundred chemicals for producing smells, you would be forever having to replace the chemicals because they have evaporated away.

Re:A Scentsor?

[wjousts]

You can't electronically reproduce a smell in a way analogous to a speaker. Olfaction is a chemical sense (along with taste) and requires chemicals to be present in order to be smelt. In other words, any device for producing aromas has to have a reservoir of aroma chemicals already present, in the same way a printer must have a reservoir of ink. Unfortunately, unlike a printer where you can produce a good range of colors from 3 primary colored inks, the same doesn't happen with smell. There is no such thing (as far as anybody has been able to identify) as a primary smell. You can't reproduce the smell of benzaldehyde by mixing other chemicals in any simple straightforward way.

That's not to say you can produce a range of aromas by mixing chemicals, of course you can, it's what perfumers and flavorist do all day; but the palette of chemicals they use for, say, producing steak aromas is both large and quite different than the palette they'd use to produce, say, strawberry aromas. If you wanted a palette that could reasonably cover the entire range of aromas you might smell in everyday life (from steak and strawberries to gasoline and dog shit) it would easily run into several hundred chemicals.

Re:A Scentsor?

[wjousts]

Producing a single smell (like steak) or a small number of smells is easy. Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult. That aside, your point about lingering is also very true. It's pretty hard to suck the aroma back out of a space and there are problems with contamination as well (example, I was grilling over the weekend and the clothes I wore that day still smell like smoke).

Re:A Scentsor?

[Anachragnome]

"Generating a system that would be flexible enough to cover a wide range of the "aroma space" is much more difficult."

Not at all. The big mall we have here in town manages numerous smells during all business hours. The clothing shops have leather scents wafting from them, the jewelry stores have rose scents and such, etc, etc. Every single store has SOME scent being pushed out the front door into the open areas of the mall. They simply have some periodic sprayer releasing canned scents into a fan duct above the doors. They've been doing it for at least the six years I've lived here.

It is also the reason I don't do ANY business there anymore.

I have a headache within 15 minutes of walking in the door of the mall. The problem is that they are not using actual components for smells, such as leather to produce the smell of leather, but rather some chemical composition that merely smells like leather. All of the smells are artificial and there is no regulation of the chemicals they are exposing all of the customers to. The companies that manufacture the scents are the only ones determining what is used and what isn't. Considering they do it for profit, I do not assume they are using known SAFE chemicals but rather chemicals that simply smell like what the customers want. I actually tried to find out what chemicals they use. The mall managers denied they used them at all, yet when I pointed out the clothing shop that smelled like leather but didn't sell a scrap of actual leather, I was told that the smells of the mall "mingle" and that it was probably from a different store.

Other Smells

[jdpars]

I wonder what the billboards for the local strip clubs will smell like.

Re:Other Smells

[Abstrackt]

I wonder what the billboards for the local strip clubs will smell like.

Sweaty perverts and broken dreams I imagine.

Re:Other Smells

[TheLink]

Oh noes a tank full of unwashed sceptics...

Re:Other Smells

[linzeal]

Ass, lotion and desperation.

Bet you didn't think of this

[girlintraining]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat? Not all of us get all wet at the thought of eating a giant piece of cow. How is this different than wearing thick cologne or perfume, or slathering on aftershave to the point that the hallway still reeks of it hours after your passage? You know what, I'd rather smell burnt gas and diesel than half the things the general public slathers all over their body in the name of attracting the opposite sex. People who wear Axe and Old Spice, I'm looking at you.

And now in addition to my daily routine of overly-scented people, they're adding overly-scented advertising? :( As if flashing, gyrating signs, sometimes moving and smoking, signs that are visible for miles wasn't enough. What next, shooting french fries at passing motorists?

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[PlasmaEye]

What next, shooting french fries at passing motorists?

Now that's what I call Fast Food.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[hedwards]

The technology should be completely banned. It's hard enough for those with chemical sensitivities to go about their lives without getting sick as it is. Having billboards distributing fragrances which may or may not make people sick is just wrong. It's bad enough for those of us that just have easily irritated noses, I feel sorry for the people that get really sick.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[clone53421]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat?

I guess there’s just yet another place they’d have to avoid, as well as not being able to drive on half the streets in the city anyway because of various meat smells emanating from the restaurants and fast-food places.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be as big a deal as you seem to think.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Monkeedude1212]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat?

What about the people who get sick at the smell or sight vegatables?

If it had been the smell of a fresh salad would you mind as much?

Don't hold your breath, I don't think this idea will catch on.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Sir_Lewk]

I hope they start selling this stuff in cans. I could use it as vegan repelent.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Sir_Lewk]

Something should be banned nationwide because your wife doesn't like it. Wow, that is some seriously messed up perspective you've got there.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[StuartHankins]

I was told by several women that they didn't like Drakkar, Gio, Polo, Givenchy Pi, Joop, Oscar de la Renta, Quorum, Paloma's Minotaur, and Boss. At first I thought it was just the girl but it seems some actually prefer the cheap air-freshener scents. To prefer Bath and Body works or Old Spice / Coty / CK seems very alien to me. Maybe people are losing the ability to pick up some of the varied tones in these?

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Your wife is an annoying twat.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Khyber]

Let me pour some H2SO4 on you then, since you claim to not be sensitive to chemicals.

EIR

[MightyMait]

Hmmm...I wonder if something like this requires an environmental impact report. Could those scents be toxic?

Re:EIR

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

This is North Carolina. I think smoking is still mandatory there.

Re:EIR

[19thNervousBreakdown]

By mitigate, I mean mitigate your annoyance to others. Don't hide it, you're a fruitcake, just be a fruitcake. But acting like you're saving my fucking life and I should be eternally grateful because you got "chemical" smells banned offends me infinitely more than even your awful b.o. You're doing it because you've concocted some weird theory of irritants and health meters and are worried that your own health meter is red and flashy, so don't pretend to give a shit about others when you know for a fact that even if it was discovered that the smell of tetra-hydra-peroxipterodactyl added 10 years to your life and b.o. caused impotence you wouldn't change a thing.

Also as annoying as I personally find your kind, I don't wish a bike accident or anything on you, and I wouldn't be happy in even the smallest way if you did get plowed by a Dow Chemical delivery truck while biking and coughing your high-pitched cough through the inner city to the farmer's market that's taking up all the fucking parking in my office complex.

I mean, I wouldn't cry 'cause I'm not a fag, but I would genuinely feel bad for you and your family.

Post from The Future!

[Quiet_Desperation]

ScentAir, The Silent Killer
by Mavra Chang, Reuters, New York
June 9, 2023

The advertising world took another hit as the 1000th case of brain cancer from the ScentAir advertising campaign was announced today...

Scooped by NPR???

[Itninja]

NPR covered this a week go. Granted, this is idle, but come on...

Re:Oh boy

[localman57]

Old Spice.

Smells like shame!

[strayant]

So, would a billboard for a strip club smell like shame?