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Written by Stephanie Hoo, asap
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Friday, 18 May 2007 |
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Ever wanted to smell like a cucumber? No? How about Play-Doh? Maybe not. And yet, a company called Demeter Fragrance Library is marketing these and other odd scents as perfumes — including one called, uh, “Funeral Home.” Is this a gimmick or what? Have they gone too far?
For Demeter’s chief marketing officer Christopher Gable, some scents are admittedly aimed at getting customers to take a second look in today’s crowded perfume marketplace.
“When we were starting, we knew we had to be provocative,” Gable says of the firm he co-founded in 1993.
“Some scents are going to be ones that make you interested in the line, and they’ll be a certain percentage of people who buy them. The larger percentage of people will buy something else — but they may be interested in it because they see a name like ’Dirt’ of ’Funeral Home’ and say, ’What on earth is that?”’
Up from “Dirt,” more pleasing scents include best-sellers “Angel Food” and “Gin and Tonic,” he says.
(For the record: “Dirt” does in fact smell like dirt. “Funeral Home” smells like a mourning bouquet. “Cucumber” and “Tomato” smell like those vegetables.)
But offering funny odors is more than just a marketing trick, he adds.
Maybe the scent “Play-Doh” evokes a happy childhood memory. Ditto for “Earthworm.” Demeter is selling “scent as pleasure as opposed to scent as an identity,” he explains. In other words, it’s something for you to smell because you like it — maybe at the end of a long day or before a big meeting — and not a scent that you’re projecting on the rest of the room, he adds.
Gable won’t release profit figures but says the firm is a moneymaker.
Its newest promotion is a tie-in with the candymaker Jelly Belly, offering scents such as “Blueberry Muffin” and “Mango Pineapple Salsa.”
In the annals of marketing, we’ve come a long way from Chanel No. 5.
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The company’s Web site: www.demeterfragrance.com
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Stephanie Hoo is asap’s business writer. | Only registered users can write comments.
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