Well That Makes Sense!
How Dior Expertly Communicates Scent Through Their We Love Perfume Campaign
The sense of smell…
It’s the strongest sense that’s tied to our memory, yet one of the hardest for us to fully understand.
The ability to smell the invisible can bring us back to our first kiss. It can remind us of our favorite leather jacket from college. It can recall memories of our lost but not forgotten loved ones. And such is the powerful allure of a masterfully crafted fragrance and one of the reasons why large luxury brands almost always extend their product offerings into the industry.
Yet, large brands and niche perfume houses alike have always struggled to communicate scent through media channels in a way that makes their next potential customer say, “I get it”.
Let’s be honest, exceptions aside, when’s the last time you saw a perfume ad that actually made sense?
No pun intended…
Though several campaigns have done their job in creating curiosity and demand by, most perfume centered content has always been so avante-garde that it leaves the viewer only curious, but not attached…until now.
When I first saw Christian Dior’s We Love Perfume campaign, which promotes their Maison Christian Dior line of fragrances and home candles, I was immediately sucked into their world in a way that no fragrance campaign to date has ever done. The last campaign that I thought was expertly executed was the fairy tale botanical fantasy video for Gucci Bloom; the video the brand released across social media featured the stunning Dakota Johnson and friends exploring a fantasy garden all to the tune of an ethereal ensemble by Portishead.
The series of videos Dior promoted were different, much different. Instead of following the formula of most perfume ads, the house chose to go a different route that acts as a 3 part combination to familiarize the fragrances, elevate the perceived value, and instantly personalize customer experience all resulting in a well executing campaign that’s racked up over 185,000 views on their Instagram T.V. channel alone.
Here’s how they did it
Step 1 Create a Familiar Fantasy
For a brief moment, think back to the last amazing meal that you ate.
Picture the way the smell of the food filled the atmosphere and how the robust aroma wafted into your nose when the plate was placed in front of you. Maybe it was your favorite sweet that you treated yourself to for sticking to your diet all week.
Take in the smell of the fresh cookies, hot from the oven and baked to perfection.
Close your eyes and inhale the aroma of the slivers of dark chocolate ever so gently being placed on top.
If you think of it long enough you can probably remember exactly how that first bite tasted as well and that’s because our sense of smell is so powerful that we are able to vividly remember the past through it much more than we can through sight or sound.
Yet, most perfume ads focus on creating a fantasy future instead of creating an instant connection between their product and your past and this is where Dior begins their coup.
For the We Love Perfume campaign the house uses three videos featuring real life people and the scent connections they make to the world they live in. Through a game, in which the house asks each person a series of questions intended to provoke them to recall their fondest scent memories, the players describe the smell of objects they use in their everyday lives instantly making the campaign relatable as you begin to recall similar memories from your own experiences as well.
In the video above featuring Chef Jean Imbert, he walks about his garden and describes his fondest recall of scent memory being food pulled out of the oven of his home at the age of ten. Then, he starts to speak of his hometown and describes the rich smell of the sea, the herbaceous aroma of pine trees and begins to recall the scent of tomatoes in the winter, citron in the summer and honey all year round. As you continue to watch the video you also start to recall fond memories that your sense of smell is connected to and you simultaneously begin to wonder what these scents would smell like in a Dior fragrance.
“I have a dog that I really love, but the dog stinks.”
In another video Dior asks Lou Doillon to describe a ritual she practices. As the camera pans to her adorable French bulldog she describes how much she loves him, but equally how much he stinks-so the first thing she does upon arriving home is light a candle. Again, you’re immediately called upon to think of your own furry friend and you start to imagine how amazing a Dior candle might smell compared to whatever aerosol spray you typically reach for to freshen your home.
And within seconds Dior has moved you to create a fantasy of what your life would be like with their fragrances based on familiar memories of your past instead of trying to convince you to fall in love with a fantasy future of your life and make the connection to how their product is the bridge between the gap.
Step 2 Elevate The Perceived Value of The Product Through Association
Perceived value plays an important role in luxury marketing strategies.
Often, those outside of the luxury ecosphere think price controls whether a product is luxury or not, but it’s has much more to do with the perceived value of a luxury product that controls the price. While the growth of the niche perfume industry has helped raise awareness and perceived value of fine fragrances, Dior knew they had to do something to ascend the value of their Maison Christian Dior line to the viewer who may not be a connoisseur or perfumista- especially considering the price, when compared to their best sellers like Sauvage and J’Adore, comes at an almost 100% markup for a 4.25 oz bottle.
Dior elegantly does this by bringing awareness to the level of mastery required to make a fine fragrance through associating the line with three master artist: Chef Jean Imbert, Singer/songwriter Loui Dillon (the half sister of Charlotte Gainsburg), and French Canadian artist/actress Charlotte Le Bon-all who are well known internationally and have a generous social media following.
Celebrity and influencer endorsements are nothing new, but the student of luxury will take notice to how brands like Dior use them in campaigns. When you watch the We Love Perfume Videos notice how Dior doesn’t elevate the celebrities in them, in fact, they reduce them to normal everyday people that use their products as normal everyday objects.
The result is the elevation of the product itself through a bit of reverse psychology.
When you take extraordinary people and have them use your products as ordinary objects you in turn make your product become extraordinary to seemingly ordinary people.
This is exactly what Dior has done in each video.
By having people who are masters of their art use their products the brand tells your subconscious that the products themselves are a masterful work of art as well and therefor worth the asking price.
Step 3 Personalize The Experience Through A Subtle CTA
The final step in the We Love Perfume campaign is simple, but certainly deserves to be mentioned. As each video comes to an end the artist smells the fragrance or candle from the line, looks into the camera and says, “I am” and the name of the product they are promoting.
For example, the beautiful Charlotte Le Bon says, “I am, Thé Cachemire” at the end of her video above.
As a stand alone phrase the quote doesn’t do much, but when the video is watched in full length it becomes the icing on the cake to an amazing marketing strategy.
After the brand has created familiarity through memory recall and elevated the perceived value of the line by associating it with master artists, they invite you to go on a journey of olfactory self discovery with a subtle call to action.
“Je sui, Bois d’Argent”
Dior isn’t banking on the hope that you’ll care what fragrance each celebrity identifies with, they’re betting on your curiosity and desire to be included by leaving you to wonder what fragrance you identify with.
Because you cannot see or hear a smell through an ad, or a piece of content, fragrances will continue to be one of the more difficult luxury products to communicate to customers. By creating a video series that causes the viewer to create their own fantasy by tapping into their existing scent memories Dior eliminated much of the strain of communicating the value of a smell to their audience.
Does your brand sell a product or service that relies on the use of other senses that aren’t necessarily as tangible and easy to communicate as sight and sound?
When developing your next content or advertising campaign try to think of ways that you can familiarize your product with your audience. You could try taking the traditional route in luxury marketing by understanding the lives your customer aspires to live and then begin making connections to where your product fits into that ideal, or you could do what Dior has done and allow your audience to familiarize themselves with your product through linking it to cherished memories from their past.
What do you think is easier to buy into…
A future that you’ve never been to?
Or a past that you’ll never forget?
