humor in perfume marketing

click to read the likes and dislikes

Love Ya Would Want to Smell Ya

Love ya

would want to smell ya

my remix of Love ya, wouldn't want to smell ya.


painting: Perfume of Desire  Lura Astor

pssst ...

a cologne spoof starring the big man J.C. himself

Musk You Do That?

here and in Canada, here

Illustration: Lura Astor

Aspirational Vehicles

Years ago I stood on a crosswalk of Laguna Beach's tourist row when new Hummers filled the street - shiny, new, fast, high, cocky, tourist traffic be damned esprit. There were a lot of them, and most of the Sunday drivers looked like the young military from down the coast, sitting on high. I thought, this'll sell gasoline.

Then I met a woman whose parents had bought a Hummer and she sniffed, what are people doing buying the car if they can't afford the gas? The vehicle reminds me as part hearse.
 
Arianna Huffington ran for governor of California against Arnold Shwarzenegger. Her site played a great animation - her driving a gas saving Prius and Arnie in his Hummer gas consumptive.
I found it! This animation still makes me laugh here it is from 2003
His direct quote, "I'm for children" plays a bit differently in 2011.

Today I read, in ... the Huffington Post ... that GM General Motors is discontinuing the "controversial brand" read here

Hummer cologne came out with in-depth branding. I test drove a spritz of the aspirational cologne vehicle Hummer 1 and it ran right over me. Just as they are designed to do. In the perfume boutique I worked at years ago, Hummer didn't do great sales but Ferrari Red and Ferrari Black were huge sellers among boys, men and women buying for boys. Aspirational vehicles in a box with the logo on Ferrari yellow.

If you are over 18, 21 or 39 depending on the country where you live, you can click here scroll down to number 3 and listen to the beginning of one Hummer song. I am sure they are singing about the manly cologne in the manly machine.
It is by The Yuppie Pricks and titled Hummer in my Hummer.

There, I did it. Linking cars - colognes - music - animation - politics - gasoline - humor!

Point lastor!

we really are bananas

Promises in a Container
... continuing on,

AXE says Spray More Get More. That's about as mark mark as it gets; alpha alpha.

Here, the Visual is used to sell the Olfactive, with promises, humor and a good deal of hope, or as we say, the aspirational. One aspires to ... the promised rewards.

I used to go to a perfume boutique, no longer in business, and loved talking fragrance with the owner. He knew his stuff, but he loved to sell the sex part. He'd warn that you were a weapon now, walking out wearing your new fragrance, loaded for bear. Though it didn't work on me, he never stopped trying.

One day, his young teen son walked in clutching a brown paper bag, looking slightly embarrassed, if not sneaky. It did not fly by the dad who immediately asked, what do you have there? And then, Who bought that for you!

Uncle, mumbled his son, looking apologetically at his dad who looked apologetically at me. I was laughing. Here were shelf upon shelf of hard to find fragrances and his son wanted ... AXE. Like father, like son? ... susceptible to the not-so-subliminal, not even sublime, messaging?

With taglines fit for young boy-men, such as how dirty boys get clean, there's the market.

to continue ... the selling of fragrance as sexual enhancement, seen here in some commercials; many more online.

*click to see  AXE commercial 2002? Keep your eye on the scent ...

In the AXE ad, Which one is you? you are told that you can mix them together, just as I was told I could do with the Creeds by a sales rep. Two Creeds at $260-460+ each, Two Axes at $10+ each usd

This one I'll call replay

For all you chiropractors, massage therapists, healers out there, fragrance induced Back Pain

I've never smelled the stuff. All I know is it is laughing to the bank.

Online commentaries include derisiveness towards the smell and wistful it never did that for me!

crow, crow, crow your feet

received due to post 7/13/2009:

If you have any Creed scents left on kleenex, please forward immediately as I am wrinkling as we speak.
 caw caw, or, as my French speaking crows laugh, Fracas Fracas

sniffing my way through life may prevent wrinkles

Stopped to smell some scents ...

One Sales Associate (SA), showing me a tuberose based fragrance, expressing how much she likes roses.

Tuberose by any other name is swollen grey flower of the agave family. 
agavaceae not rosaceae

It is easy to over-sell or over-teach. For whatever reasons, sometimes it's hard to pull in the reins and just shut up.

Though repeatedly agreeable with what various Sales Associates were saying about a fragrance, they would not stop, even when I backed up, moved away, said, yes, yes, yes. 

Though I was sold, the sale was not.

Finally, it got to percentages. The percentage of oils in Creed and comparative percentages of alcohol in Creeds and other perfume brands. Creed! the hard sell ... how the oils have antioxidants, and here, the SA looked at my neck, and said, they help prevent wrinkles.

Creed Prevents Wrinkles the newest tagline?

Deah, deah, deah. My laughline crow's feet positively crowed.

I did get a laugh out of the serious, aggressive, Clive Christian rep. She told me that the night fragrance drove men bananas. I said, men are already bananas.

Thus, I got to hear about the sex life of other SAs raving about the effect of this potent potion and, though she poised to spray me, I retreated to mark myself ...with oud.

Oud Wood by Tom Ford, the tester spilled over my hand. I did not complain, though hearing a chorus of background whispered gasps; I wiped the floor with a kleenex. Acting gauche in an upscale store? due to carrying a spritz of Rive Gauche pour Homme/YSL on a kleenex on my person?

Kleenex the new tester strips no matter how expensive the appointments in decor (Calder mobile, etc.)

I was told the Tom Ford representatives train the sales help to say Ooh, or, Oh Wood, with the oud expressing a silent D. 

I learned it as oudh, silent H, or OoD, pronounced D, agarwood, aloeswood or jinkoh. Caring more about the smell than pronouncetorial correctness. Some say extreeeeeme, another says extrhehhmm.

Once, smelling Fairy Dust/Paris Hilton/Parlux, I walked away shaking my head, smiling, praising how succinctly the group targeted their market. The grape Kool-Aid note with Tinkerbell magic is the stuff their target age group gobbles up, as sales show.

Paris Hilton and Guess? brands represented over 90% of Parlux's total business in fiscal year 2008 FY end March 2008 pre-Fairy Dust and Paris Hilton brand had shot up 37%. 

Parlux 2008 Annual Report

Asked which scent does make men bananas, I sigh. Every perfume/fragrance/scent makes one sexual. Supposedly. Scent signals of flowers, pollen, petals, wink wink dew, nectar, sap, sweat, wink wink insects, birds, hormones and pheromones ... bottle it up, apply to homo sapiens (truth in marketing: wise man or knowing man) and it is sex in a vessel, container, bottle or grail.

Walking by a kiosk, denying a spritz of the fragrance that day, the lovely accented one yelled after me, It Will Make You Sexy!

I yelled back, don't you think I'm already sexy? wink