Can a presentation smell bad? or good?
Think of a memory linked to smell. What comes to mind? The scent of your grandmother’s freshly baked cookies? The salty air of summers by the sea? Or maybe a fragrance that instantly brings back someone dear?
That memory has the power to make you relive the very same feeling with incredible intensity, more vivid and immediate than any image or sound.
And yet, in presentations, how often do we focus solely on sight, perfect slides, impeccable design, or on hearing, the voice, tone and rhythm, forgetting that we have at our disposal an extraordinary and often overlooked sense: smell.
Perhaps COVID-19 reminded us just how fundamental it is. The temporary loss of smell showed us how deeply it is tied to pleasure, memory, and daily emotions. But despite this awareness, we still rarely use it, neither in our communication experiences nor in presentations.
The forgotten sense
Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart points out that smell is the only sense that almost directly reaches the emotional brain: in just a few milliseconds, it connects to the amygdala (where emotions are born) and the hippocampus (which stores memory).
Sight, on the other hand, takes a longer path: visual information first passes through the thalamus, the brain’s “switchboard,” which filters and processes the data before sending it on to cognitive and emotional areas. This makes sight an extraordinary sense for analysis and comprehension, but less immediate on an emotional level.
That’s why a scent can strike us faster and more intensely than an image: because it isn’t filtered, it bypasses logic and goes straight to emotion.
So why not use this power in presentations?
How to use smell in a presentation
We’re used to thinking of a presentation as something to be watched and listened to. But smell can become a surprising ally, creating an instant emotional bond with the audience. Here are a few ways to introduce it effectively:
Evocative scent diffused in the room: imagine walking into a space and immediately smelling the fresh aroma of citrus. Even before the slides appear, the audience feels energy, vitality and novelty. Or, conversely, a warm woody note can communicate stability, deep roots, and solidity.
Associating a fragrance with a key concept: linking a smell to a specific idea helps anchor it in memory. Speaking about “growth” while releasing the scent of freshly cut grass, or about “home” with the aroma of bread or cookies, turns an abstract concept into a tangible experience.
Individual olfactory experience: it doesn’t have to be about perfuming the entire room. Each participant can be given a small box or sealed card to open at a precise moment in the story. That simple act, opening, lifting and smelling, transforms the audience into active participants, adds surprise, and makes the presentation multisensory and memorable.
Smell works because it’s direct, rapid, and universal. It needs no translation, no explanation: it just acts. It’s an invisible language that speaks to emotions before the rational mind has time to intervene.
Why it really works
Engaging smell means going beyond logic. A scent imprints the message into emotional memory, triggering associations and feelings instantly.
It’s the so-called “Proust effect”: a fragrance that brings back distant memories with surprising vividness.
The truth is, a presentation should not only be seen or heard. It should also be felt. Because the more senses we engage, the more our presentation will be remembered.
It’s time to stop conceiving presentations as a sequence of slides and start seeing them as a shared experiential moment.
👉 What moment in your next presentation would you use smell to create an unforgettable memory?
This article is part of Quantum Presentations: a series exploring how ideas from quantum physics can elevate storytelling, communication, and presentation design.
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