IF I JUST BOUGHT YOUR PRODUCT, WHY WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Unfortunately, when I work on my websites and some other applications I have to leave pop-up windows unblocked, and I don’t like to have to switch between the blocked and unblocked states depending on what I’m working on. As a result, I see lots of ads everywhere, but have mostly learned to ignore them. In a way they’re instructive because they have taught me something about ineffective advertising strategies.  

The strangest phenomenon of all is that of pop-up ads for an item I just bought a day or two ago. It’s happened over and over again. I buy a 250-foot roll of Parafilm (a material that I use to cover flasks during processing), and suddenly everyone in the world wants to sell me a 250-foot roll of Parafilm. If I wanted more than one, would I not have bought multiple rolls in the first place? I can see the possible utility of advertising items related to the one purchased, but not the identical one. If I bought Parafilm, maybe the supplier should advertise Erlenmeyer flasks, magnetic stir plates, beakers, or other lab equipment. I might even see something I needed or “needed”.

The same goes for perfumes and cosmetics. If I buy an item at an online retailer’s site, suddenly ads for that exact item pop up all over the place, usually from the same retailer from whom I ordered. I fail to see the logic behind advertising retrospectively. Shouldn’t the advertiser try to anticipate the customer’s needs and wants instead of trying to sell the same thing over and over?

I’m sure this maladaptive advertising strategy is driven by software robots with no common sense, but surely the people who implement it and choose to use it should be expected to exercise some common sense. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but I’ve now seen it happen over and over again. Have you experienced this backwards advertising strategy? Can you think of any rationale for it other than ease of programming? 

[Billboard adapted from a photo on Hopkins Medicine's website; dog chasing tail from The Daily Mail, push-pull sphere from Wikimedia]

REVELATION: WHAT IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION?

A while back I wrote about some of the elephants that chronically lounge around in the perfume community’s living room and occasionally go on a rampage, stomping around the blogosphere. I don’t think this particular one’s been active lately, but I started thinking about it last Sunday morning when I was taking pictures of my newly upgraded work area, thinking that I’d post them here. I probably will, but in the meantime I got distracted with the philosophical question of how much perfumers should reveal about who they are, where they work, the ways they work, and what they put in the bottles that consumers buy.

Judging by traditional perfume advertising campaigns, consumers want to believe that perfumers are glamorous beings who don’t engage in any of the mundane things normal people do, but instead live an unimaginably glamorous life in splendid palaces when they’re not flitting around the globe on their yacht in search of exotic new scents like angel breath, thousand year old oud trees, fresh morning dew on jet-black orchid petals, and odorless male pheromones that will hypnotize women (or men). These are the minority of consumers who are actually aware that perfumes are created by perfumers, although they may well confuse the “creative director” whose name is on the perfume with the actual perfumers who are employed by that person to make the fragrances. I suppose the majority of consumers want to believe that perfumes are actually made by their favorite celebrity or somehow spontaneously generated in the hands of a perfect, glowingly photoshopped model, who spends all her (or his) time faking self-induced orgasms with a perfume bottle. Often she's in pink or red, he's in blue or black. Keep reading. You'll see his picture, too. It just didn't fit the space here. 

Real perfumers eat, sleep, go grocery shopping, and do all of the same things that consumers do. Instead of flitting around the globe, we flit around the internet trying to find the best Boswellia carteri essential oil (aka frankincense) or fossilized hyraceum excrement (aka Africa stone) at the most economical price. We weigh and measure chemicals, filter solutions, and some of us even wash our own glassware. Do consumers really want to know this? Should we talk about such things in the blogs that we use to document our thoughts and our lives?

Traditional perfume advertising completely ignores the fact that perfumes have to be created in a lab atmosphere. The ads and the hype would have us believe that if perfumes are created at all, it happens in elegant, spacious showrooms complete with plush carpets, chandeliers, vases of flowers, relaxing music, and sparkling crystal shelves, or in a magic, fairy-tale kingdom from a children's story. Each precious bottle of perfume is prepared specially for each consumer by other-worldly blonde fairies in spotless, flowing, designer lab coats, who generate sparkling, rainbow-colored bubbles whenever they mix the magical ingredients together.

Do consumers really want to know that we indies wear ratty sweats while we work in dark, cramped spaces with messy-looking shelves of unmatched bottles and geeky equipment that looks like it belongs in a molecular biology lab? Or at the other end, do consumers want to know that the magic potion they pin their fantasies on came out of a dark, ugly, scary-looking factory, maybe a sweatshop in a third-world country, or a sterile, mechanized factory that produces thousands or millions of identical bottles, untouched by human hands, let alone pretty fairies? Probably not.

Maybe the biggest issue has to do with the contents of the bottle. Traditionally, perfume formulas are proprietary secrets, like a chef’s recipe, which makes sense given that they can’t be copyrighted. Advertising traditionally lists fantasy notes that may or may not have a lot to do with how the fragrance smells. People’s olfactory systems are so suggestible that they can usually find a note if they’re told it’s in the perfume. It doesn’t actually have to be there. They’ll perceive the promised angel skin, fresh morning dew, black orchid nectar, odorless pheromones, star dust, or rubber car tires simply because they expected to. Ads promise sex appeal, self-confidence, happiness, and the lifestyle of the rich and famous, all in a bottle. Should we, as perfumers, burst those ephemeral bubbles of harmless deception by talking about what we actually do?

For me as a perfumer and a blogger, it’s always a dilemma how much to reveal. With any art form there arises the question of whether knowledge about its creation process interferes with instinctive, gut-level appreciation of the art. Does detailed knowledge of music theory or technique make you less appreciative of the emotional effects of music? As a consumer, does knowing the technical details of how perfume is made render you less appreciative of its emotional effects and less likely to enjoy the imagery and fantasies that fragrance evokes?

For me, knowing the details may make me more critical of technically mediocre work, but when I hear a moving piece of music or smell an evocative perfume, the effect is just as strong as if I had no knowledge of the technical details. In fact, maybe it’s stronger because I’m aware of the imagination and skill that went into the creation of the art. It’s even more surprising when something that seems like technically mediocre work has a strong emotional effect or a technical masterpiece leaves me cold.

I know the answers to these questions are going to be different for each person, but it would be interesting to hear readers’ thoughts on whether knowing the details of how perfumes are made interferes with, or even ruins, the illusions and fantasies that perfume creates. Leave a comment and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a 5-ml parfum spray of the Olympic Orchids fragrance of your choice. 

[Revelation painting from Bamberg, 11th century. Perfume ads were all taken from various internet sources. I assume that no one minds given that negative or dubious attention is better than none at all.] 

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]