Hornbach: The Smell of Spring

Spring in the garden we are all familiar with the smell. It smells of grass, flowers, fresh soil in short, it smells of new beginnings and the desire to get active in the great outdoors. It may sound impossible to try to bring this special smell to life in the communication, but the new HORNBACH campaign aims to do precisely this, traditionally with a blithe portion of madness added for good measure. The smell of spring captured in the sweaty clothes of some typical HORNBACH characters. That is the stuff the new HORNBACH campaign is made of. As a central element of the campaign, the new ad tells this story with a generous helping of fun and absurdity. Two dubious scientists, accompanied by a no less dubious container, go around collecting the clothes from hard- working garden lovers. Clearly, the clothes now smell of spring and it becomes clear what happens to them once the ad switches to a nondescript, hostile city, where a young woman retrieves one of the vacuum-packed shirts from a vending machine and ecstatically sniffs it. ‘That’s the smell of spring’ is thus the central message of the campaign.