Perfume has always been seen as a luxury, but with more and more being released by different companies, perfumes are now having to shout in order to be recognised over the rest. And with older generations continuing to buy their favourite perfumes, the new task is to get a new generation hooked at a young age, so they continue to buy for life. But is perfume a thing of the past? Can perfumists lure in Generation Y. Watching a 3 part BBC documentary series on Perfume has introduced me to the world of perfume in preparation for my next module, all about this large industry. But the business is something which previously I did not think about, I only ever thought about how beautiful it smelt!
Jean-Paul at Guerlain in Paris, france has always been taught that his inspiration should come from the people close to him. He suggests that the best way to create a beautiful perfume is to design one for the woman you love; something that will make her feel stunning. I think this adds a personal touch to perfume, and makes the perfume seem more luxurious and classy, as the frangrance is about the scent and the glamour behind it, rather than purley about making sales. the scents also have history behind them, witgh the same recipe used jow to the written 100 years ago. But, on the other side of the atlantic in New York, it is the big name brands which dominate the industry, and therefore these independant perfumes are begining to fall behind. Here, in Manhattan, perfume is not an accessory which needs to be kept for life, but should be changed regularly to match the customers changing preferences. Chandler Burr, collumn writer for the New York Times, the largest metropolitan newspaper in the US. suggests that this however does not keep customers hooked to a certain brand. Instead, he thinks that by shouting and forcing too many products on a consumer does the opposite, and makes a person confused and not want to repurchase.
I think in a way this can be true. As a consumer, you can sometimes have too much choice, and this puts you off all together. But as such a demanding generation, we now want this massive choice, and we all look for something different from our scents. But with so many perfumes, how do you make a new product stand out from the crowd? Scent is invisible, and so the documentary emphasises the importance of perfume marketing and packaging, with the bottle standing out as the most important aspect in perfume sales. But promises to some of the biggest brands in NYC include that it shall smell fantastic. Although the bottle and packaging is important in enticing the customers to buy the perfume at first, it is what is inside, the scent, which persuades them to keep buying again and again.
Therefore, it may be the people who make these scents who really need to be praised for creating these amazing scents. For example, New York's Christopher Brosius uses real life scents in his perfumes, one of his creations being the smell of a musky human body! Of course this is not everyones taste, but I believe that just being able to create these types of challenging scents is amazing. Christopher experiments with memories, letting smell evoke emotions which have a strong meaning or memory attached to them, something which personally I think is amazing as really turns perfume into more than just a fashion accessory. There are certain smells that transport us to happy times, or help us remember people who we don't see anymore for so many different reasons, and I love the idea that you are able to capture this scent, whether it be food, alcohol or possessions, and be transported back to these happy memories.
The series also looks at non-western countries, and how the perfume industry is affecting them. Looking at Brazil in particular, it is clear to see how the importance of perfume is growing, as sales are rising massively. The poorest half of the country now spend as much on perfume as the richest half of the country do, therefore stresses how companies can target both market levels and be popular and successful in these growing areas of the industry. I think it was really interesting to see how these peoples spending habits differ from western countries, and this really stresses the potential for fragrance success in the future in even more fast growing countries like Brazil.
Overall, I think the documentary series had very interesting points which really got me thinking more about fragrance and the way in which it is sold. The product is infact just scented water, and so it is extremely important to market the product in the correct way to suit market value and target consumers and in order to be a success! However, although this has got me really prepared for the fragrance part of our next module, I did find the documentary quite repetitive. By flipping between just the two perfume companies, many facts were repeated across the series, and I think that this did not give an accurate representation of the perfume market as a whole. I would've like to see some more companies point of view to really get a great understanding of a variety of market levels, not just mass and high end.
#fcpreflection
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