ELEPHANT No. 2: PERFUME ADVERTISING

To follow up on my last post before I hurry off to another orchid show, this one in Seaside, Oregon, I’d like to leave you with another one of the elephants in the room that I started parading a while back. This elephant is advertising. As you may have guessed, the psychology of advertising is a pet topic of mine. I think about it, I analyze it, but I am still in a quandary as to how to apply it effectively in my own fragrance marketing. 

The question of the day is, “How little is too little and how much is too much?” There are a few perfume vendors, mostly retailers that carry multiple lines but also some individuals, that send me e-mails on a weekly basis, or even oftener. If the messages mostly contain information that I perceive as irrelevant to me, after a while I get annoyed and start marking them as “junk” so that they get banished to the great spam graveyard in the ether. If the company did send me something interesting and relevant, I’d never know it.

Obviously bombarding people constantly with e-mail, Tweets, Facebook invitations, or other such stuff isn’t a good strategy. But perfumers and other businesses do need to inform customers about new items and special offers, and just remind them to go browse from time to time. I think Luckyscent has it about right, at least for their purposes. They send an e-mail once a month or so with notifications about new items and a special offer sample pack. One of the growers that sells infant orchid plants sends out an e-mail with new items and special offers once every 2-3 months. More often than not, these e-mails spur me to order a Luckyscent sample pack or check out Carmela Orchids’ latest flask and plug lists and see if they have anything I want. My own goal is to send out newsletters on a quarterly basis, always with some sort of special offer.

Not enough visibility, and one slips through the cracks. Too much and it’s just annoying noise and people stop paying attention. It’s the delicate balancing act of trying to stay on the peak of the Wundt curve, that magical mathematical function that’s applicable to just about everything in life.

Originally developed by German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) to quantify the relationship between motivation and performance on a task, among other things, the original inverted-U-shaped Wundt curve quantifies what Goldilocks always knew. However, it seems to have been largely forgotten by contemporary psychologists, despite its near-universal relevance. Too big isn’t good, too little isn’t good, it has to be just right. No motivation, and performance is poor – enter the slacker actor who didn’t memorize his lines. With too much at stake, enter the performer who is over-prepared but frozen by stage fright because he’s so eager to succeed, or lacklustre because he's sick and tired of the material. Music is perceived as most pleasant when it's somewhat familiar sounding, but not too familiar. There’s always some sweet spot where performance is optimal.

Of course that sweet spot is not only delicately poised atop two slippery slopes, it’s a moving target because it’s different depending on circumstances and the intended audience. What do you think about frequency of fragrance advertising? What induces you to check out a website or make a purchase? What turns you off? 

[Elephant and Goldilocks graphics from Wikimedia] 

HOW MUCH ADVERTISING IS TOO MUCH?

Nearly every day I get a dire message in my inbox from some organization that “needs to raise $X00,000 to …” counter some political manoeuvre or another. Or to prevent an environmental disaster. Or a social disaster. If they don’t get the funds immediately, the sky will fall and we’ll all be burnt to a crisp in the ensuing economic meltdown/natural catastrophe/social chaos, or whatever their pet threat is. It’s sad because I support most of these groups in theory and have donated to them or otherwise supported them at some point in the past. However, I am not an infinitely rich cash cow that can send each of them a big donation every time they ask. And they’re asking far too often for their own good.

It’s no wonder the entire population has grown apathetic. Every side of every issue cries wolf so loudly and so often, always with their palm outstretched for contributions to build the latest wolf trap, that we no longer believe any of it, or want to help in what seems like a scramble to see who can raise the most money, not who can do the most good. I don’t want to hear who’s raising the most money in an election and I don’t want to be part of that game. What I want to hear is candidates’ relevant qualifications (not details of their personal life) and their specific plans to improve (or at least maintain) every relevant aspect of the areas over which they have influence.

If it were up to me, voters would not see campaign signs, pictures of the candidates, any form of advertising, or gratuitous blurbs about their families, pets and other private activities. They would all have to take a rigorous exam to make sure that they’re qualified for the office they’re seeking and, if they pass, write a paper on their positions and plans, and engage in a written debate with their opponents. In fact, the debate could take the form of an ongoing social media exchange, closely controlled, i.e., proctored to make sure that the candidate is actually the one writing the responses without help, and moderated to make sure that the candidates stay on topic and do not engage in ad hominem arguments. The results of the exam, the paper, and the debate transcripts, along with the candidate’s CV, would be published in all of the news media free of charge (after all, this IS news).

Maybe it sounds dry and boring, but at least it’s better than the uninformative and boring ads and solicitations that are infesting every corner of the real and virtual environment now. And it’s a lot cheaper. The only expense would be designing and administering the exams, and proctoring the paper-writing and debates. This could all be done by one of the companies that makes up and scores the exams for entrance to graduate and/or professional school. The millions (or is it billions or trillions?) of dollars that would otherwise be spent on political advertising at all levels could be spent on something real, like education, health care, infrastructure maintenance, food, hiring real people to answer the phone and, of course, perfume.

You knew I’d eventually drag perfume into it, didn’t you? This is because I started out to write a post on the optimal amount of advertising for perfume businesses, but words have a way of doing their own thing. This post is getting too long, so I’ll save that for next time. 

[All images from Wikimedia. US Grant being examined by Uncle Sam by Frank Leslie, 1872, so it's not a novel idea. In fact, the theory that political candidates should be knowledgeable and competent is an old-fashioned idea.]