With all the emphasis placed on the visual merchandising of a fragrance, you begin to wonder if the scent itself has anything at all to do with its success. You only need to take a look at the fanfare surrounding the recent Coco Chanel Mademoiselle mini-movie starring Keira Knightley to see the lengths companies go to so as to make their scent stand out against the rest.
Chanel isn’t the only brand pouring efforts into the faces they choose to represent their fragrances. Ralph Lauren’s newest advertising campaign for its women’s perfume Romance features world-famous polo player Nacho Figueras and his real-life wife Delfina Blaquier riding horses through a field (kissing at the same time, might we add. Talk about multi-tasking).
This week, Yves Saint Laurent announced Benjamin Millepied as the face of the brand’s new men’s scent, due out in September. The principle dancer at the New York City Ballet and choreographer for Black Swan will join the likes of Olivier Martinez and Vincent Cassell as a face of the brand’s men’s fragrances. While the appointment is somewhat surprising, we have little doubt that Natalie Portman’s husband-to-be is up for the challenge.
In other fragrance news, has revealed its plans to build its Sensuous franchise into a bigger brand. The announcement comes coincides with the brand’s release of its latest perfume, Sensuous Nude, due out in August.
Sensuality needs full expression – no one scent encompasses the full expression of what is sensuous,” explains Jane Herzmark Hudis, global brand president for Estee Lauder. We always intended to use Sensuous as a platform to explore that concept. We are building this franchise for the long haul.”
An inspiration for Sensuous Nude was Estee Lauder’s 1953 ad for Youth Dew, which featured an image of a nude woman in profile stepping into her bath. According to Aerin Lauder, style and image director for Estee Lauder, Estee was a genius marketer and very ahead of her time.”
With millions being poured into marketing, advertising and brand representatives, it seems there’s a lot more to the success of a scent than the way it smells. Case in point: the effect the Dior J’Adore advertisement with Charlize Theron had on me. I didn’t care how that smelt – I just had to have what she was having. I guess that’s the whole point…