Presidential Candidate Lures In Voters with Great Korea Perfume {The 5th Sense in the News}

In Korea, presidential front-runner Lee Myung Bak must have a keen nose and believe in the powers of olfaction like no other since his campaign staff has decided to implement a very unusual strategy for "branding" the candidate's image. Drawing on marketing experience and department-stores' olfactory branding of which Korea is an early practitioner, the idea has been taken a step further by attempting to associate feelings of "hope, victory, passion" with a perfume called Great Korea that was secretly sprayed at public gatherings and will be again sprayed when voters enter the polling booths. Obviously no law forbids this type of political manipulation since it has never been done before (?) and can be accounted as one more publicity tool or can it be?..........

 

The semi-covert operation called "The Perfume of the President" has a Big-Brother flavor to it and seemed not long ago to be safely relegated to the realm of science-fiction but its has been conducted for real since the beginnings of the presidential campaign and will be ultimately tested on December 19, 2007 when voters make their ways to the voting urns. Lee Myung-Bak has already a 30-point advance in the polls.

According to Reuters, a militant Kwon Hae-Jin said that even smokers were responsive to the charm of the perfume telling her that she smelled good.

This is a new twist on the notion of charisma and what a perfume subliminally associated with a celebrity can do to your brains. (via L'express and Reuters)