MiC‘s K-I-S-S Pick: magazine scent strip for a hotel chain

What should a hotel smell like? That's the offbeat question that sparked the creation for Westin Hotels & Resorts of a fragrance dubbed White Tea, plus a novel and far-reaching print campaign, all courtesy of its NYC-HQ'd creative agency, Deutsch Inc. First came the blending of the perfume - elegant with just a hint of snootiness - and then its migration to a raft of Canadian and American magazines in the form of a scent strip.

The strip first began appearing down south this spring in The New Yorker, Real Simple, Travel & Leisure, Golf, Condé Nast Traveler, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Forbes Life, Wired, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Self, Time Business, Departures and T:Travel. In Canada, it's running until the end of the year in EnRoute, GolfStyle, Golf Canada, Ski Canada, Maclean's, Time, Elle Canada, Canadian House & Home, Food & Drink, Toronto Life and Western Living.

What should a hotel smell like? That’s the offbeat question that sparked the creation for Westin Hotels & Resorts of a fragrance dubbed White Tea, plus a novel and far-reaching print campaign, all courtesy of its NYC-HQ’d creative agency, Deutsch Inc. First came the blending of the perfume – elegant with just a hint of snootiness – and then its migration to a raft of Canadian and American magazines in the form of a scent strip.

The strip first began appearing down south this spring in The New Yorker, Real Simple, Travel & Leisure, Golf, Condé Nast Traveler, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Forbes Life, Wired, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Self, Time Business, Departures and T:Travel. In Canada, it’s running until the end of the year in EnRoute, GolfStyle, Golf Canada, Ski Canada, Maclean’s, Time, Elle Canada, Canadian House & Home, Food & Drink, Toronto Life and Western Living.

White Tea will go on sale in September at the chain’s westin.com/store and in-room catalogue as well as select Nordstrom stores in the U.S. in the form of a candle, potpourri and a reed diffuser, with in-hotel sales likely later on.

Next up in the chain’s ‘Experience Westin’ campaign are two inserts that will run only in select American publications this fall. The most innovative of the two shows stress-oriented words such as ‘schedules,’ ‘Mondays’ and ‘traffic’ in die-cut windows. At the bottom is a tab the reader can pull to make the words disappear, while all that remains is ‘This is how it should feel’ above the Westin logo.