Case Study: Telstra
Designing Calm and Focus into the retail environment
When Telstra set out to explore the emotional quality of its retail experience, the brief went beyond making stores smell distinctive. The collaboration asked whether scent could become a programmable part of the environment—designed alongside lighting, spatial design and the wider customer experience.
What began as a four-month collaboration centred on Telstra’s Melbourne StoreLab expanded into a live multi-state program across five Australian states. In the process, Telstra and Auric pressure-tested the creative, technical and operational foundations of Auric’s Mood as a Service™ model.
The brief
Can scent become part of the designed retail experience?
Telstra’s brief focused on Calm and Focus as experience territories. The objective was to explore how scent could contribute to a more intentional environment for customers and staff, while remaining consistent with Telstra’s broader store design and brand experience.
These territories describe the intended experience. They are not presented as guaranteed or clinically measured emotional outcomes.
What Auric Spaces delivered
1. Signature scent development
Auric developed scent directions around Calm and Focus using its Ritual framework, formulation process and knowledge of scent delivery in physical environments. This work led to Fabric, Telstra’s signature scent.
The formulation and its associated deployment model form part of Auric’s growing intellectual-property base in signature scent and connected delivery.
2. A four-month test-and-learn program
The teams evaluated the practical elements required to make scent work inside a live retail environment, including staff feedback, scent intensity, device placement, timing, zone configuration and day-to-day operational fit.
The program was not simply a fragrance trial. It tested how a scent experience could be configured, adjusted and supported as part of an operating store.
3. Melbourne StoreLab integration
Inside Telstra’s Melbourne StoreLab, scent was considered alongside lighting, retail design and brand experience. This created an opportunity to treat scent as another programmable layer of the environment rather than as a standalone fragrance product.
The StoreLab phase helped refine Fabric and the operating model before the program expanded into additional locations.
4. Multi-state deployment
The program expanded across retail locations in five Australian states. Auric supports the network through configured scent schedules, connectivity monitoring, oil-usage visibility and replenishment planning.
This moved the work from a single-site experiment into a distributed operating program—one that could be installed, monitored and supported across different locations.
What the deployment established
- A signature scent could be developed for Telstra and translated into a repeatable in-store program.
- Connected scent delivery could operate within day-to-day retail workflows.
- Settings could be configured across different locations while maintaining a consistent scent direction.
- Usage data and monitoring could support maintenance and refill planning.
- Operational learning from live stores could inform future iterations and measurement.
The next measurement opportunity
The deployment has created the operating foundation for deeper evaluation. The next step is to assess scent alongside relevant retail indicators such as customer feedback, NPS, transactions and dwell patterns, using an agreed baseline and measurement methodology.
Until that work is completed, Auric does not claim that Fabric has increased sales, dwell time, customer clarity, staff focus or return on investment. Those remain valuable questions for structured measurement rather than assumptions presented as results.
Why the Telstra program matters
The Telstra collaboration demonstrates something commercially important: Auric can create a signature scent, configure connected scent delivery, deploy it across a distributed retail network, monitor its operation and support replenishment at scale.
It also demonstrates the larger idea behind Mood as a Service™. Lighting, sound and temperature are already designed and programmed within physical spaces. Telstra and Auric are exploring how scent can become part of that same connected environmental layer.
Mood as a Service™ is therefore more than a concept on a presentation slide. Through Fabric, it is being tested in real stores, across multiple states, with live operational learning shaping what comes next.
