Celebrities and Fragrance
A friend of mine from Paris recently sent me a link for a program which aired on M6 Replay, France’s answer to Entertainment Tonight. After a few human interest stories, the crew did a segment on modern perfumery and the use of celebrities in advertising. The show went on to explain the intentional linking of a particular scent with a celebrity who transcends different cultures and genres, i.e. films, modeling etc. in order to make them accessible to a wide international audience. The idea is that someone in the U.S., or France, or China would all recognize the celebrity, though perhaps from different sources/mediums.
One of the clearest examples given is that of Amanda Seyfried, who recently appeared in both “Les Miserables”, the modern adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic and “In Time”, a sci-fi dystopian flick alongside Justin Timberlake. She has also been featured in numerous Clé de Peau Beauté and Movado ads, clearly a young woman who would be recognized by a large audience (though I will freely admit to having no idea who she was, despite having seen Les Mis. So with all of this “baggage” behind her, the thought is that upon linking her face with Givenchy’s Very Irrisistable, (though there is no explanation for why Liv Tyler got the boot), each of us will bring to the table (or the perfume counter) whatever associations we have. In a potential consumer’s mind, she is at once beautiful, elegant, daring and refined, all qualities that any perfumer would love superimposed upon their fragrance, without having to spell it out.
The show went on to reveal how much money these stars made for these (typically three year) contracts – generally in the $5 million to $10 million range, monies which needless to say are not being invested in the actual perfumes themselves. The best part of the segment came when several consumers were asked which stars were the faces for which fragrances. As you can imagine, there were several blank stares and wrong guesses. It quickly became obvious that the fragrance companies had missed their intended mark, because despite the millions spent on celebrity “endorsements”, consumers did not consider this when making their fragrance purchases.
This made me reflect on perfume ads of the past, where models were chosen more because their look represented the spirit of the fragrance. But then my memory banks fluttered with the Catherine Deneuves, Claudia Schiffers and Paulina Porizkovas who graced countless ads with their iconic visages. And then my memory banks fluttered one last time, to remind me that we bought the fragrances (again, and again, and again) not because of their perfect faces, but because the fragrances themselves were flawless.
