BACK FROM THE BEACH AND FACING ANOTHER WEEK

The orchid show in Seaside was successful for many reasons, not least of which was that it provided an opportunity to get away from everything overly familiar and spend two gorgeous, warm, sunny days at the beach. Seaside is a small tourist town on the Oregon coast, about a 3 to 4 hour drive south of Seattle. The beach is wide, with very fine sand, and a good many broken sand dollars and razor clam shells lying around, but not so many that they can’t be avoided when running or walking along the water’s edge. Between our hotel and the beach was a grassy dune area and a paved pedestrian promenade. The view from our window was the dunes, the beach, and the hill to the south of the beach. At all times of day there was a lot of “fog” kicked up by the surf, but it was especially noticeable in the early morning and evening.

I had to spend most of both days at the show, but did manage to get out on the beach for a few hours each day between closing time and sunset. I’m not a water person. I don’t particularly like to swim, and am not good at it. I don’t like to be in water over my head, and I don’t like to put my face in the water. I hate cold water in all forms, but I do love the beach. I was thinking about this over the weekend, and how strange it is that I’m attracted to the beach when I don’t like to be immersed in bodies of water larger than a hot tub. I decided that the beach itself is neither water nor earth, but air and sun. I’m not superstitious, but I do have enough information about my horoscope to know that it’s almost all air signs, mostly Libra, with a rising sun and some Leo fire thrown in for good measure. This accident of birth could be used to rationalize why I love the beach, and why I grow only “air plants” that don’t require soil, although I suppose it could be used to rationalize just about anything, including why I love the “saltwater taffy” that’s always sold in beach candy shops. To me, the beach represents freedom from whatever earthy constraints there are on land and, at the same time, freedom from whatever dangers are lurking in the deep water. It’s a magical place at the interface between two worlds that I really don’t want to be in.

Fall quarter is in full swing, so it was back to the reality of the classroom as soon as I got home, with theatre rehearsals in the evenings. I need some quality time with my orchids and with the list of orders waiting to be filled, but it probably won’t happen until the weekend. In the meantime, I’ll just try to get through my list as best I can. 

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] 

THE AMERICAN AUCTION

I’ve written about the issue of online fundraising pleas before, but a few days ago I received a message that included the wording, “How much we raise before midnight tonight will determine how strong [our political party] will finish in just 37 days”.

Really? Have the fundraisers become so openly cynical that they tell potential voters (and donors) that the election is just a big auction, with the merchandise going to the highest bidder? Why the scare tactics? Who is really benefitting from all of those “at least $5 donations” that increase to at least $15 if one clicks on the “donate” link?

As a scientist who studies the basis of behavior, or even as a naïve but aware and thinking individual, I really resent blatant manipulation tactics like these.

The first strategy seems to be to scare your potential supporters into thinking that if they do not donate money, the party will lose the election. The implied reasoning is that they would “finish weak” because they could not afford to buy votes. If money does, indeed buy votes, we might as well all give up any shred of hope or belief that candidates are elected based on their ideas, their platforms, and their ability to do their job competently. Why not just let there be a real auction, with various public offices on the block, sold to the highest bidder? Maybe we could take this system to its extreme and institute a parliamentary system in which the 10 (or some other number) highest bidders reveal themselves, the people vote for them directly, and they then appoint their favorite politician wannabes to the various offices in the ratio in which they received the popular vote? This would formalize a system that’s been operating more or less effectively behind the scenes since the beginning of recorded political history.

The second strategy commonly used by those soliciting donations is to shame people into giving more than was initially asked for. The e-mails always ask for, “at least $5”, presumably luring people into thinking that even though they have very few resources, they can afford to give a little bit to the cause, reasoning correctly that all of those $5 donations add up. However, when one clicks the link to donate, there appears a menu in which the choices start at $15, quickly escalating into the hundreds of dollars. How many people who intended to contribute $5 end up checking one of the existing boxes and giving more just because they didn’t want to appear stingy by writing in $5? How many just shake their head in disgust and don’t donate at all? If a solicitation asks for $5, the designer of the request should provide $5 as a clear option on the donation form. If you want a minimum of $15, then ask for $15. What’s so hard about that?

These tactics are not limited to one political faction or another, nor are they even limited to politics. The “bait-and-switch donation amount” tactic is commonly used by all organizations that solicit contributions. The “generate fear” tactic is also commonly used in many situations besides politics. Aren’t people onto these strategies by now the same way they’re onto the long-lost relative in Nigeria who wants to transfer millions of dollars into your bank account if you’ll only give him the information about how to access it? I’m always fascinated by attempts to manipulate behavior, but I wish the manipulators would show at least a little more imagination and originality.

[Slave auction painting by Jean-Léon Gérome (ca 1884); Fear painting by John H Mortimer, date unknown, money-changer painting by Marinus van Reymerswale (ca 1541)]

DRIED FIG LEAVES

This fall has been unusually sunny and dry. We have a bumper crop of ripe tomatoes, unusual in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been giving them away by the grocery bag full. Usually we bring the tomatoes in green when the rain starts and they slowly ripen by Thanksgiving. The indoor ripening process is scary because it means that most of the “ripe” tomatoes in the supermarket could be months off the vine. The other crop that’s unusual has been the second fig crop, which normally doesn’t make it, but this year has been fat, sweet, and juicy.

There are lots of perfumes based on green fig leaves, and some based on the fruit. They’re all good. However, yesterday an online friend wrote me asking if I’d ever smelled dried fig leaves, crushed to release their fragrance. I had not, but rushed out to the back yard to retrieve a few crisp, fallen leaves from under the brown turkey fig tree. Dried leaves were scarce because the tree’s leaves are all still green and figs of all sizes and stages are still growing, taking advantage of the fall sun. When I crushed the dry leaves in my hand, I was amazed to find that they released a strong, sweet fragrance full of coumarin, coconut, and sunny, dry, dusty things. It’s a perfume in and of itself, different from fig fruit, and different from green fig leaves. It could stand alone as a perfume. 

When the fig trees drop enough leaves, I’m going to try tincturing them and see what comes out of the process. I’m also thinking about how to synthesize the smell of dried fig leaves. That’s what I love about tinkering with plants and fragrances. There’s always another project! 

LAELIA ANCEPS: A LESSON ON DISSECTING ORCHID SCENTS

On this gorgeous, sunny fall day, Laelia anceps is in full bloom, with three perfect flowers on a stalk that’s almost 3 feet (1 meter) long. The flowers are large, causing the stalk to arch over gracefully and sway in the slightest breeze. I prefer not to stake my orchid flower spikes because I like to see how they would grow naturally and how they would move to attract pollinators. This year the petals have a bit of a dark magenta splash on them, and are quite beautiful. The whole flower sparkles in the sun with tiny, shimmering points of light. If I were an insect, I would be strongly attracted to the flowers just based on their appearance, which is as nice as that of any hybrid.

My first impulse as an orchid grower is to pollinate the flowers, but I have an orchid show coming up next weekend in Seaside, Oregon, and hope that the flowers will last long enough to make it there and back before doing anything to them. 

Since reading up on orchid fragrance analyses for the making of the “Orchid 17” accord for Sonnet XVII, I’ve started to recognize individual aroma chemical molecules in the fragrances of the orchids that bloom in my greenhouse. What I smell strongly in Laelia anceps is gamma-decalactone. This molecule is a component of many fruit and flower fragrances including gardenia, peach, apricot, and osmanthus as well as fermented products like beer. It’s also used as part of the pheromone communication systems of certain insects. For example, male scarab beetles emit it to attract females – the legendary “chick magnet” fragrance, if you’re a scarab beetle.

In most of the fruits and flowers that contain gamma-decalactone, it’s buried in among many other things, simply rounding, flattening, and mattifying, the scent, but in Laelia anceps, it’s up front and center stage. It’s described by The Good Scents Company as “fresh, oily, waxy, peach, coconut, buttery, sweet”, but that really isn’t how it smells to me. TGSC’s description is more a list of odors that might contain the molecule rather than the odor of the molecule itself. To me, it’s flat or slightly concave, matte, neutral colored, and almost sour, sort of like the smell of a sour dishrag - a sweetish, slightly fermented scent. Laelia anceps surrounds its overdose of gamma-decalactone with just enough bright, fresh floral notes to push it barely over the edge into pleasant territory. I’m sure the insects would love it if I put it outside for them.