Pinterest and Estée Lauder Launch Personalised Scent Scanner

In partnership with Pinterest, Estée Lauder and Jo Malone London have launched Scent Scanner – designed to recommend fragrances based off of a user’s Pinterest.

Using the visual preferences consumers have expressed on the Pinterest boards, the Scent Scanner will give personalised Jo Malone fragrance recommendations. 

With their permission, users can connect a Pinterest board from their profile and the Scent Scanner analyses the visual cues and themes in their saved content to build a “curated fragrance pairing” – a personalised set of Jo Malone London scents.

It takes into consideration factors such as imagery, colour palettes, textures, destinations, rituals and aesthetics to suggest the fragrances best suited to the individual.

This, Estée Lauder says, has been created to offer new ways for consumers to find their own personal scent – shifting the starting point towards images rather than words, which can often be difficult for buyers to interpret. 

“For years, personalisation in beauty meant asking people what they wanted. The bigger opportunity is to understand what they already love – and to meet them where their taste already lives,” says Aude Gandon, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies. 

“Scent Scanner demonstrates how we can combine the power of creativity and commerce to make fragrance discovery more relevant and engaging.”

Pinterest as a shopping platform

Scent scanner has been launched to create a bridge between initial inspiration and purchase on Pinterest, with the company shifting towards shopping and commercialisation on the platform. 

In January, Pinterest appointed Claudine Cheever as its Chief Marketing Officer to help lead this move towards commercialisation – overseeing a consumer marketing campaign aimed at positioning the company as a visual search platform people want to shop on. 

“People come to Pinterest to picture the life they want, and they tell us who they are in images long before they have the words for it,” says Julie Towns, VP, Product Marketing and Operations at Pinterest. 

“Scent Scanner reads that visual language and turns it into fragrance discovery that feels less like searching and more like being known. It's a natural next step for a platform people use to dream, discover and do.”

‘A new era’ of digital scent discovery

The Scent Scanner follows on from the Jo Malone AI Scent Advisor, launched in December. 

This tool uses AI to digitally recreate the in-store consultation experience online – asking customers to describe the kind of scent they’re looking for in their own words. 

Using Gemini and Google’s Cloud Vertex AI platform, the scent advisor interprets natural language responses and maps them to Joe Malone’s olfactory data attributes to generate expert-informed fragrance recommendations. 

As online fragrance shopping lacks the sensory cues of in-store experiences, this was designed to make it easier for consumers, and first-time buyers in particular, to select a scent. 

“We are entering a new era of digital scent discovery where AI can bridge the gap between curiosity and confidence,” said Jo Dancey, Global Brand President at Jo Malone London.

“With the launch of our AI Scent Advisor, we’re strengthening the way consumers explore scents, bringing the Jo Malone spirit of curiosity and creativity to online fragrance discovery.

“This smart advisor lets people describe in their own words what they’re drawn to and translates that into meaningful, tailored scent recommendations. It’s designed to feel like having one of our fragrance experts at your side, wherever you are.”