Perfume and Stars: from Faces to Marketing Strategy
OSMOZ magazine

Perfume and Stars: from Faces to Marketing Strategy

15 july 2013

Stars and scents have been closely tied for a long time. While some perfumes, like Chanel N°5, have become veritable icons in their own right, more often, stars incarnate fragrances. Today, the relationship has come full circle, because more and more celebrities are not just fronting, but actually creating their own fragrances…

Star Faces

Luxury houses have always understood how important their image is. That’s why they create a whole world around their fragrances, instead of just worrying about the juice. From the bottle to the face, everything is carefully chosen to achieve the result that was dreamt up months before the fragrance itself had been composed.

And what sells a new product better than connecting it to a household name? From luxury items to foods to household products, if you recognize who’s telling you about something, you’re more likely to remember it.

And if you like the celebrity in question, then their charm carries over into the store… George Clooney clearly gives coffee greater sex appeal than, say, Richard Nixon would.

That’s why companies love to get celebrities to incarnate their products. In perfumery in particular, it’s very much the done thing. Just another pretty face clearly won’t have the same impact as an international star. In fact, you often hear people say, “That’s Kate Moss’s perfume,” or, “You know, the one Taylor Swift did the ad for,” rather than the brand’s or the fragrance’s name.

Perfumers count on actresses, singers and models’ celebrity to enhance their products’ aura of glamour. After all, the whole point of perfume is to escape from drudgery, isn’t it? When you see Natalie Portman in the ad for Miss Dior perfume, unconsciously, you want to wear it to, to be like this woman who is so clearly herself, and yet is such a star, too… It’s all about identifying with the face.

Celebrities, the new perfume designers?

Nowadays, that lucrative pairing isn’t a one-way street any more. Having incarnated olfactory creations for the major houses, more and more celebrities want to embark on the adventure of launching their own fragrance.

While it might start out as a way to get their fan club buzzing; or a true artistic temptation or even a way to try a new trade, the simple truth is that after the first dozen or so celebrity fragrances, stars have understood the financial stakes behind these products!

Having a bottle with your name on it is the latest status symbol in show biz. You can launch a fragrance to help re-energize your career, to boost sales of your latest album, and more.

It’s also a way to get your foot in the door of the world of cosmetics and fashion. In any case, whatever it is for them, now that stars know they can turn their names into brands, more and more of them are leaping at the chance.

Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber… Every one of them has at least one fragrance with their name on it. Some stars have even turned into repeat perfumers, like Jennifer Lopez, with her 12 perfumes, and Céline Dion and her 14 fragrances!

Marketing Strategy or New Art?

From the brief to the final product, the creative process is the same for celebrity fragrances as for any other one. Just because a star has leant their name to a fragrance doesn’t mean they’ll actually participate in designing it. Only a very few stars contribute to the process from beginning to end. Most of the time, there’s a whole crew of people dealing with the various aspects. But stars do know about image – and if you want something done right, do it yourself! So they make sure to be in their fragrance’s ad campaign.

Elizabeth Taylor launched the concept back in 1991, with her perfume White Diamonds, the first-ever celebrity fragrance. And it’s still going strong! Stars’ perfumes often bring in millions; no wonder so many celebrities getting in on the idea!

Nevertheless, their fragrances’ sales are uneven, in planetary terms. Although they are phenomenally successful in the USA and Asia, they are much less so in Europe. It’s true that Europe is where the great luxury houses, known for the classic scents, come from. For now, Europeans still seem to prefer the glamour of Guerlain’s Shalimar to the glitz of Paris Hilton’s Siren.

Maybe Europeans are generally less taken by perfume as a marketing-strategy tool. In terms of the designer and the perfumer, the process and the outcome are exactly the same. The same “noses” work in the same way for the stars as they would for a fashion designer. But in France, celebrity fragrances are sold at supermarkets, and at a lower price, than haute perfumerie juices from established fashion houses.

After fashion houses and celebrities, you’ll be thrilled to learn that now you can have your own perfume without having to hire a perfumer. More and more fragrance boutiques are getting into custom-made or “bespoke” scents… So with an almost infinite range of possibilities, you’re bound to find your idea of olfactory perfection some day, whether it’s signed Kylie Minogue, Yves Saint Laurent… or you! 

 

Alizée Perrin

Alizée Perrin

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After high school, I decided to study journalism, because I wanted both to explore my love of writing and to satisfy my taste for openness towards others. I graduated from Paris’s Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme, and I work essentially for Ykone. That is where I was able to learn about the...

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  • 02 august 2013

    Há tantas celebridades que emprestam fama aos perfumes... mas poucas se envolvem diretamente com a criação.

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  • 02 august 2013

    Há tantas celebridades que emprestam fama aos perfumes... mas poucas se envolvem diretamente com a criação.

    Report abuse
  • 02 august 2013

    Há tantas celebridades que emprestam fama aos perfumes... mas poucas se envolvem diretamente com a criação.

    Report abuse
  • 15 july 2013

    Na contramão de perfumes de celebridades (quer seja inspirado nelas ou que elas tenham participado da criação), o perfumista Geza Shoen prefere linkar suas criações a um apelo,digamos, mais intelectual. Geza tripudia Paris Hilton e seus perfumes, preferindo homenagear uma campeã em jogos de memória.. Se é comercial ou não, é um fator a discutir..

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