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Simon SinekThe Smell of Memory with scent designer Dawn Goldworm | A Bit of Optimism Podcast
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
How scent shapes memory—and how brands engineer emotional loyalty
- Dawn Goldworm describes how smell routes quickly to the limbic system, linking scent tightly to emotion and memory and making it a powerful tool for creating loyalty.
- She explains that scent reactions are conditioned by culture, generation, and environment, using examples like lavender’s limited cultural meaning and differing responses to cow or garbage smells.
- She outlines how fragrances are constructed from notes and accords—like musical chords—and why realistic smells (like leather or “new sneaker smell”) are engineered combinations rather than single ingredients.
- She recounts projects including creating a Nike signature scent from layered sports accords, developing a Western-leaning Porsche launch scent for the Middle East, and designing the Valentino store scent around Rome’s contrasts.
- Simon Sinek and Dawn Goldworm discuss scenting Simon’s book Together is Better via a long-lasting “rub-and-sniff” page, built from his stated color, texture, shape, emotion, and a key memory of a fireplace after it’s gone out.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasSmell creates fast, emotion-linked memories that can be intentionally designed.
She explains that odor molecules travel quickly to the limbic system, which she describes as the brain area where emotion and memory are processed, creating immediate “emotional resonance” when we smell something familiar.
Most scent preferences are learned through cultural and personal conditioning.
She says reactions to scents depend on what ingredients people encountered early in life (and in what context), so the same smell can read as comforting to one person and offensive to another depending on culture, generation, and environment.
Vanilla is described as uniquely universal because it connects to infancy.
Dawn Goldworm says vanilla is the one universally liked scent because vanillin occurs in breast milk (and is replicated in formula), linking it to early feelings of safety and comfort.
A decaying human body is presented as the one globally consistent “bad smell,” with military implications.
She identifies the smell of a decaying human body as the universally disliked scent and says the Defense Department trains people to tolerate it and that it has been used as an olfactive weapon to disorient people.
Brand scents can be built from multiple ‘accords’ that still read as a coherent signature.
Using Nike as an example, she describes recreating specific sports-related smells (e.g., a soccer cleat in dirt, oily basketball, court skid ‘off-gases’) and layering them as accords to produce a recognizable brand scent.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesYour nose, odor molecules kind of float around the outside of your nose. They go up your nose, and at the top of your nose is the only place that your brain is exposed to air.
— Dawn Goldworm
And then once it gets to your limbic system, the only other two things that happen there are ... emotion and memory.
— Dawn Goldworm
I often say I'm not creating a scent, I'm creating an emotional resonance for you.
— Dawn Goldworm
Vanillin occurs in breast milk.
— Dawn Goldworm
The smell of a decaying body.
— Dawn Goldworm
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SPEAKERS
Author and leadership speaker, host of the A Bit of Optimism podcast.
Dawn Goldworm
guestScent designer and professional perfumer (“nose”) known for creating branded scents and olfactory experiences.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
