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YSL Scent-Sation - An Industry First.
Scent-Sation Leverages Neuroscience To Provide Personalized, Precise Fragrance Advice

Scent-Sation! Created by L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator, Yves St Laurent and a team of industry experts, alongside EMOTIV, this unique, state-of-the-art fragrance in-store consultation experience connects neuro responses to fragrance preferences through a multi-sensor EEG-based headset*. The headset uses machine learning algorithms that interpret EEG, while consumers experience proprietary scent families, to provide the ability to accurately sense and monitor behaviour, preferences, stress and attention in real-world contexts. This industry first helps consumers determine their perfect scent best matched to their emotions.
According to Stephan Bezy, International General Manager at Yves St Laurent Beauté: ”This immersive experience connects fragrance preference to emotion for the first time. It’s a huge technological breakthrough that will help decode what consumers want to smell as he or she discovers new fragrances. We’re excited to empower consumers with powerful insights and help make their search for the perfect scent both easier and grounded in how it makes them feel”.
Research underpins the need for this. 77% of consumers want their fragrance to bring them emotional benefits.Through a blind test, L’Oréal found that people connect various emotions, including happiness and relaxation, to their scent preference. More than half of consumers aged 12-34 say they choose a fragrance based on their mood.
This is where Scent-Sation comes into play. This breakthrough system captures 5 different feel-good emotions triggered by 14 different accords, representing 27 YSL fragrances. It then translates them into a unique, personalized selection of 3 YSL scents.
So, how does it work? What are the 5 steps of this personalized fragrance finder diagnosis experience? Here’s how Scent-Sation is explained by YSL Beauté to all.
Step 1. Emotional profiling. 
Answer 8 questions and the algorithm determines which 6 accords are most likely to stimulate you, make you feel good – musk, aquatic, creamy woods, solar florals….

Step 2. Connect Scent and emotion with YSL Scent-Sation

A specially-trained beauty advisor adjusts the YSL Scent-Sation headset on your head. As you smell the 6 accords ‘blind’, your turns scent into emotion. When you breathe in an accord, are you relaxed, focused, less stressed, stimulated or energized? The captors on the headset register how each olfactory note stimulates your neural activity by measuring the electrical impulses they trigger in specific areas of your brain.

Step 3. Deep-dive into your emotional olfactory profile

Discover your personal likeability curve for each accord and compare it with the YSL Beauty community’s

Step 4. Discover your personalized YSL fragrance recommendations

Your personal recommendation is formulated by an algorithm programmed for machine learning, with a constantly growing global database. You will discover your 3 selected YSL fragrances ‘blind’, with just a number, the key accord and the fragrance family written on a digital card. Just touch the card to find out their names. Are you a Libre, Black Opium or Mon Paris woman? Or a Y guy or a La Nuit de l’homme man? Or would you prefer Tuxedo, Wild Leather or Atlas Garden? Scent-Sation will be your guide.

Step 5. Select your feel good YSL fragrance

Out of the 3 fragrances, 2 will perfectly match your results. 1 will be unisex or for another gender. The choice is yours. Your emotional profiling results and recommendations will be emailed to you. If you want, you can share them with your friends, family and the YSL Beauty Community.
And the results? It’s early days, of course, but they are impressive. As we know, there are thousands of fragrance options available in a sea of options in the market at any time and it is certainly a challenge for anyone to effectively navigate them and actually make a choice that is the right one. Yet, according to Stephan Bezy: ”Through this immersive system we were able to get 95% of people the right fragrance personalized to their needs and desires, which is enormously higher than without this technology. It’s a huge first step in this category. Once we know which scents  make people feel happy, energized, or other emotions, we can customize fragrances even more – the potential is boundless”.
A final word from Tan Le, CEO of EMOTIV, partner to YSL for Scent-Sation. ”It’s scientific, it’s emotional. It’s the future”.
One can’t help but agree.
And where exactly is Scent-Sation available? It will be rolling out in Yves Saint Laurent flagship stores in multiple countries later this year and through 2023. And, importantly, plans include Travel Retail over time. It will be a great fit.
* An EEG – electroencephalogram is a recording of brain activity. A completely painless test, small sensors are attached to the scalp to pick up electrical signals produced by the brain.