A Predisposed Nose

An interesting post from Stuart Elliott of the NY Times on the innovative marketing of Chanel’s newest fragrance line summarized below:

Marketers of luxury brands have been laggards in advertising online because they have considered the traditional media better showcases for their glamorous, glitzy pitches. Now, Chanel is joining the ranks of brands with big Internet presences, devoting a considerable part of a sensual new global campaign to efforts in the new media.

The campaign, for the Coco Mademoiselle fragrance, includes ads on Web sites like eonline.com, instyle.com, nymag.com and nytimes.com as well as search-engine marketing on Google and Yahoo.

There is also a special Web site mademoiselle-forever.com where computer users are able to watch video clips as well as get a virtual tour of the Paris apartment of the designer Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel.

To generate “buzz” about the special Web site, Chanel has been communicating with the writers of 200 blogs around the world, including Beauty Addict (beautyaddict.blogspot.com), Blogdorf Goodman (blogdorfgoodman.blogspot.com) and Kristopher Dukes (kristopherdukes.com). The bloggers received a mysterious box offering them a preview of the special Web site along with an inside look at the making of a sexy commercial that is the centerpiece of the campaign, featuring the young actress Keira Knightley.

More than a dozen bloggers were even invited to Paris, to receive an actual tour of the Chanel apartment.

The full article can be found here.

What I found interesting is the use of  on-line media, social networks, blogs and influentials to promote the new Chanel perfume Coco Mademoiselle.   Here’s a product category that really lends itself to experiential marketing and finally someone is going beyond the scratch & sniff ads in the high priced fashion mags.

Not being a perfume wearer myself, what intrigues me is how imagery, social chatter, recommendations, brand names, and even a tour of the designer’s home can predispose a consumer’s senses to expect a certain smell.  I’m not sure what I would expect this perfume to smell like much less be able to describe that fragrance, but it’s interesting how marketing can get your nose properly “set up” to have a brand deliver on an olfactory promise.   Great experiential campaigns engage as many senses as they can to deliver on the brand promise.  With each additional sense, the consumer becomes more involved and more immersed in the essence of Chanel.

Think of other great brands in the food, wine, music or even clothing (tactile) categories that market through one sense (sight or sound) only to pay off that marketing through another (taste smell or touch).   And hopefully everything connects in a meaningful way inside the consumer’s mind.

As my friend Erik Hauser says, “Good experiential marketing doesn’t always have to be touched (in a live event sense) to be felt”.

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