Our first olfactory emotions, love stories, trips, outstanding personalities, exceptional dishes... These are all memories and emotions we can now listen to and share online thanks to this new podcast app that gives pride of place to sensoriality. In nine minutes maximum, everyone can share some of their olfactory intimacy, anonymously. Olfaplay stages what perfume finally does so well: recount stories.

While synaesthetic processes around perfume abound, they generally only explore the link between smell and taste or smell and images. This new application that sublimates the emotional part of the perfume, through the sense of hearing is rather original.

As Laurent Boillot, CEO of Guerlain highlighted, it is a way of "giving life to memories conveyed by perfume, to transcribe invisible, impalpable emotions." But it is also an attempt to federate the community of perfume lovers around audio creations, like blogs did, about a decade ago, through writing. Indeed, with Olfaplay, the aim is not to talk about the perfume offer in the Guerlain catalogue, but about perfumes in a broader sense. And actually, during recording sessions, it was not possible to mention names of perfumes; the idea was more to share some intimate memories, to go deep in one’s olfactory memory.

Developed by Guerlain’s digital service in collaboration with Plink (for the recording of podcasts) and Octave & Octave (for the digital application), Olfaplay enables perfumes lovers to record one of their memories on the theme of their choice. But also to listen to those of others, filtering them by mood, or olfactory universe. Like other social networks, it is possible to “like” a story and leave a comment.

New features could be added in 2019, since the app could be enriched with an audio message, to leave or listen to when someone offers or receives a gift for example. Next year looks just as exciting, since Guerlain also plans to develop an audio series around its 180 years of history, to develop an olfactory card in the manner of an audio-guide, or to imagine "olfactory contests" in order to meet people via the Olfaplay app. Quite a programme in perspective!

For the time being, Olfaplay is only available in French but the app should be available in English in the course of 2019.