MAM
Stinky Branding
The smell of armpits, dirty laundry, and soiled diapers are all now highly sought-after scents, as companies, pursuing smelly-branding have all lined up, excited for having exclusive rights to aromas which they can use to bring odor to their lifeless products. Like, peachy-smelly-bras or chocolate-smelly-underpants and so on.
All of a sudden, there is a rush to secure a copyright on any distinct smell from our daily lives, and exclusively use it in conjunction with a branded product or a service. Like the smell of bread in a hot oven at the bakery to be used by a sandwich maker, or like the smell of Gouda cheese and the notorious whiff of dirty socks, to be exclusively used by a shoe maker.
Ridiculous attempts.
So here it is. This is what happened to the most recent aggressive attempts by Paris-based company, Eden Sarl, who tried very hard to get the smell of strawberries exclusively copyrighted for products of soap, stationery, leather goods and clothing.
Initially, EU Trademark agencies refused their earlier applications, so they took it to their regional second-highest courts. They too, rejected Eden Sarl’s application. So what’s all the fuss?
The smell of armpits, dirty laundry, and soiled diapers are all now highly sought-after scents, as companies, pursuing smelly-branding have all lined up, excited for having exclusive rights to aromas which they can use to bring odor to their lifeless products. Like, peachy-smelly-bras or chocolate-smelly-underpants and so on. There are some not so pungent odors, like apples, bananas and oranges, but all the attempts for exclusive use have failed.
The sensory expansions
This brand new frontier is said to be giving a big boost to odorless products. The general idea is that by using smell as an exclusive sensory tickler, now considered by many, a stroke of branding genius, marketers can bring life to their already dead brands. Sounds very sensory, but in reality, it’s time to smell the coffee.
According to the practitioners of these trendy branding jockeys, every corporation is supposed to have their own distinct branded smell. Remember the fumes and the steamy whiffs when you enter a sausage factory, a Laundromat, beauty saloon or funeral parlor.
Now just wait for the exclusive and powerful smell of a bank, where every branch smells the same. Perhaps the smell of a fish store, or a realty office with a smell of a rose-garden, with soft music all aimed to hypnotize the customer. What about the smell of a hotel? Should it smell like an airport or the last diesel taxi? The desperate hours of the desperate branding are already here. You not only need to hear and see the collapse, but now you can smell the rat too.
Branding limitations
When there is no proper name brand identity, and there is no sophisticated cyber-branding game plan, then there is certain panic to find dumb and dumber things to do and keep the branding circus going in all directions.
According to BBC reports, the EU courts stated “Strawberries do not have just one smell. This means that the different varieties of strawberries produce significantly different smells.” Surely, we now need some wine tasters and keen noses.
On the strawberry issues, the company wanted this aroma exclusively for their product lines, just like the way some companies attempted to claim exclusive corporate colors, which indecently holds no water either and no longer a winning case, as there are only few colors and billions of companies and products. Blue is no longer exclusive to IBM, but equally used by ten thousand other computer companies. What worked in the fifties, as an exclusive color idea, is no longer valid in the post-millennium market. Don’t you smell trouble here?
Exclusive noses
As part of a new craze for smelly-branding, hip brand managers are desperately trying to project a sensory message with an exclusive aroma. Checkbooks are being scented, clothes are pre-perfumed, and cars are wildly sprayed. Now you know why massage oils are scented, and how aromatherapy became so popular.
For perfume companies, this was a normal thing to come out with an exclusive fragrance, and to sell it as an expensive branded perfume or cologne. But now, for branding to rush after the generic smells from the public domain and claim them exclusive for their product lines, is a short lived gimmick of a tricky branding attempt by the feeble few marketers and their nasal clogged minds.
Any brand can develop any original fragrance and use it just like any fashion brands have already done so successfully, but to say that the smell of the ocean and sea salt is exclusively copyrighted to a tire company is really having the creative noses buried in merde! Phew, that’s some aroma.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
