Appealing To the Senses

The nose is also closely associated with the autonomic nervous system, he said, so scents can easily trigger subconscious physical responses, even when the aroma is so slight it's hardly noticeable.

"Odors can change your heart rate; odors can cause you to start salivating," he said. "You know that smell means cookies, and there's a very short link from the parts of the brain that control those things. "

That may help explain why Yankee Candle Co. is so excited about the scented ink made by New York's Scentisphere. It hit the market in 2004 but is only now gaining wider use. Yankee Candle catalogues with the scented ink have contributed to a sales increase of more than 20 percent.

"That is significant -- if you can get a 10 percent increase in sales on something like this, you're doing very well," said Dana Springfield, general manager of consumer direct at Yankee Candle. The aroma-infused ink raised printing costs by 8 percent in the current catalogue, which used eight scents, so "the math works out quite nicely," Springfield said.

Other high-tech packaging efforts often aim to educate or instruct consumers. On some packages, for example, the pear industry has started using a label called RipeSense that changes color to show consumers when pears are ready to be eaten. It's necessary, the company says, because people check for ripeness by squeezing the delicate fruit, which damages it. More labels are coming soon for kiwis, avocados and fruit with pits. Other companies are developing labels for meat and seafood that will change color if the package wasn't stored at the right temperature at any point along the delivery chain.

Even with such innovations, though, it can be difficult to get consumers to notice the technological advances in packaging. Bob Groux, managing partner of WP Beverage Partners, which makes the Wolfgang Puck self-heating coffee beverages, said marketing is the biggest challenge.

"The pluses of the product are phenomenal. The challenge of the product is [that] educating the consumer costs lots and lots of money," Groux said. He said he's spent millions of dollars promoting the new line of drinks.

So although mothers may hate the idea of more bells and whistles attracting their kids' attention to certain products in supermarkets, for a company such as Siemens, consumer resistance is a distant consideration.

Since unveiling its new, relatively inexpensive flat electronic display technology in December, Siemens has been contacted by huge consumer-products companies and publishing giants that want to use it on magazines, said innovation manager Axel Gerlt.

"It's futuristic, but it's realistic," he said. "It's both."