Solomon Group, an award-winning leader in exhibit fabrication, AV systems integration and live event production, has collaborated with Local Projects, a multi-disciplinary design studio, to reimagine the Scent Discovery experience at the World of Coca-Cola.
The World of Coca-Cola welcomes over a million visitors each year. Its new immersive Scent Discovery exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between aroma, flavour, and memory. This is partly inspired by Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler, who identified Coke’s original secret formula ingredients by smell.
Michelle Moorehead, vice president, global licensing, retail and attractions, The Coca-Cola Company, explains: “We know that scent is a powerful trigger for memory and emotion. World of Coca-Cola’s Scent Discovery offers guests the opportunity to experience the attraction – and the world – in an entirely new way, to create new scent-based memories, while infusing fresh insight into existing memories and emotions.” 
Designed for high-volume traffic
Solomon Group are Coca-Cola’s owner’s representation, scenic fabrication, and AV integration firm, and together with Coca-Cola appointed Local Projects to develop the design for the Scent Discovery experience.
Over its 20 years in culture, educational, and corporate experience design, Local Projects has amassed a wide range of accolades, including the Cannes Gold Lion, Fast Company’s Design Studio of the Year and Best Design in North America Award, the National Design Award, and the Overall Excellence in Exhibitions from the American Alliance of Museums. 
The project sought to reimagine a Scent Discovery experience that would be exciting and engaging, without long lines or overcrowding. The team devised a design strategy that carefully addressed how each section of the experience could circulate visitors around the area at a constant and intuitive speed, informed by an analysis of the current visitor flow and pain points.
Solomon Group then developed and built out Local Projects’ design and, in only four months, created a new interactive experience. This drew on the expertise of the Solomon NEXT and Solomon HERE teams in Orlando to work on technical design, A/V design, prototyping, and testing a durable experience that would withstand high-volume traffic from curious adults and children.
Interactive, gamified experience
Amelia Falco, Local Projects designer, says: “The new Scent Discovery Experience at the World of Coca-Cola takes each visitor on an exploration of Coca-Cola’s brand history and human memory, transforming an existing 1,000 square foot space into a stimulating journey where scent becomes the vehicle for visitors to unlock personal memories, create new ones, and broaden their understanding of Cola-Cola’s unparalleled past, present, and future.”
The experience begins in The Scent Library, an interactive installation offering over 20 aroma profiles from around the world (both familiar and unusual). Visitors’ senses are transported to unexpected corners of Coca-Cola’s brand history and product line as they take in each aroma and guess its unique origins. Each aroma also provides visitors with the opportunity to relive olfactory memories from their own life, prompting them to contemplate the role scent plays in our personal history.
Upon entering Scent Discovery, visitors learn how “topographies of scent” have played an important part in brand history, beginning with Coca-Cola originator Candler. According to legend, Candler would remove the labels from the ingredient bottles used in Coca-Cola’s secret formula and blend the contents using only his sense of smell – his own topography of scent.
Next, visitors enter the iconic Coca-Cola bottle. Here, they will breathe in the fragrance of a freshly opened Coca-Cola while standing inside smooth glass walls, underneath a sparkling chandelier of carbonated bubbles. The sensory experience of drinking a Coke becomes tactile and tangible in the room, allowing guests to appreciate it in an unexpected way.
Guests complete their journey by entering an interactive, gamified experience that enables them to put their newly developed senses to the test. Friends, family, and strangers come together at interactive gaming stations to play a smell guessing game led by a Coca-Cola ambassador. Each correct response reveals a vibrant, expressive, and bizarre visual scene that encourages guests to be transported to new imaginative realms by fragrance.
Graphics in the Scent Discovery exit hallway present the diverse aroma profiles of many beverages as attractive gradients. Guests are encouraged to visit the beverage-tasting experience in the following gallery and compare the flavour profiles of each beverage to the scent profiles presented in the Scent Discovery exhibit.
With excellent social media traffic and positive reviews for the new exhibit, Scent Discovery 2.0 enhances visibility and value to the overall World of Coca-Cola experience and retains its position as one of the leading attractions in Atlanta and the world.
Solomon Group announced a rebrand earlier this year, following its continued growth in 2022. The firm’s three specialities are now known as SolomonNOW (Live Events), SolomonHERE (Themed Environments), and SolomonNEXT (Experiential Technology).
Images kind courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company
