top of page
Writer's pictureThirteen

Scent-i-Mental

Khusboo is the head of marketing in an e-commerce company. For the last six months, like most of us, she is working from home. Her team also is working from home. Daily team meetings, business reviews, designing new marketing campaigns, customer calls and management reviews are some of the key activities which keeps Kushboo engaged.


Things were running smoothly for the first few months. One Sunday morning, while browsing the internet, Khushoo came across one advert of perfumes. It was a 'lockdown special' package from Calvin Klein. They were selling small 30 ml quantity of 5 different fragrances. The unique thing was, all bottles looked alike, simple white transparent bottles with transparent liquid, no name on it. And they did home delivery. Khusboo quickly moved it into the cart and paid with her card. The package arrived the next day, Monday morning.


Monday, the first day of a new week started. Khusboo getting ready to start the work from home opened the Perfume set pack. She closed her eyes and randomly selected one bottle. She applied the perfume and kept the bottle aside to avoid confusion on Tuesday. Khusboo went through her emails. Then she opened her calendar and created a team meet as below:


"Dear Team, Today lets have a video call at 3 pm. I want all of you to come dressed in Red and White. Also, we will use the Roses available on the Zoom emojis and play "Rose Day". With Love, Khusboo 😍"


The scent of the day was playing tricks on Kushboo. She painted that entire Monday with Romance. Who starts an office meeting with a "Shayari" otherwise? The team was completely lost, wondering what their boss is up to. Kushboo was on a different trip though. The whole day she smelled like poetry.


Over the past 20 years, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF) has been working to refine its methods of measuring both the subjective and physiological effects of aromas and fragrances on emotions. Khusboo was turning out to be an excellent example for this mood mapping!


Tuesday the emotion triggered by the second bottle was a complete U-turn from day one. She started her day with stinkers. Forget the team members and suppliers, on that day even the customers were not spared. The whole week was getting chaotic. The entire marketing department was now confused and wondering what is going on with Khusboo. On Wednesdays, the emotion which dominated the day was of fear. Thursday it was Sadness. And the whole thing came to an end on Friday. Not that it was the last bottle left, but because of the emotion of that day.


Friday morning Khusboo organised a 3 pm "Friday Dhamaka" video call with the entire team. The strict condition Khusboo set for that video call was, “Dear Hotties, you have to join the call wearing ONLY your favourite perfume."



THIRTEEN is a platform for sharing six blogs and a podcast every week. For more such daily readings and podcasts, subscribe us here and receive a free weekly workbook. 
 
At THIRTEEN we intend to urge our readers to write each morning as a process of catharsis. Such kind of daily writing lightens our mind and allows us to be at ease and most importantly comfortable with ourselves! If you like our content, we request you to share this with your colleagues, friends and family.

16 views

Comments


bottom of page