Perfume mag

Voyeuristic Photographic Advertising.

Can a fragrance actually add to your attraction?

More and more frequently fragrances for both men and women have been advertised in the same way. Both on screen or in printed form, the companies will use the most beautiful of subjects for their advertisements, displayed in sexual and emotive poses, trying to signify how their fragrance is used by the beautiful and rich, planting ideas of how this can add to the user’s desirability. Whenever I see an advert like this, my first thoughts are who actually buys into these ideas, do these advertisements actually sell for their sexual content, or is it just a case of companies following the norm to get their product across.

When I see these adverts I am very cynical, my view is they are simple and stereotypical, only an idiot would be buying these fragrances based on the looks of the models in the commercial and the partners they may have seemingly attracted by using these perfumes in the ads. I have a big dislike for most advertising, especially perfume ads, but am interested to see why they use the photographic styles they do to sell their products.

I am going to research deeper into when this style became a standard in which most fragrances are advertised and why it is so popular with the companies, and seemingly the general public if it is still selling their products. I want to know who started this advertising style for perfume and how it became caught on like it did.

Looking back through older printed perfume ads going back as far as 1890, it is easy to see that a glamorous sexy lifestyle has been one of the main selling points for the companies. A study in 1970 conducted by a marketing analyst revealed that sex was the central positioning strategy for 49 percent of the fragrances on the market, showing it has been a prominent idea for a long time, although the 1970’s was seen as a bit of a cool off phase, with women finally gaining equal rights, sexual innuendoes and passes at women started to be seen in bad taste. The sexual content was still there, but pooled with other techniques fragrances use, such as sporty people photographed and youthfulness used throughout, to dampen down its striking effect. It is only around the mid 1980’s that you start to see the use of these alluring men and women advertising the products again, scantily clad and posing for the camera. Way back before this period, The advertisements for women’s fragrances were a little more stylish and chic in design, not using people just illustration and photography of the bottles, they are styled more towards a feel of the product is what every lady needs on their dresser, they are not appealing as much to a more fantasy side which many of the more modern adverts do but still had a glam feel to their imagery, but for men the sexual style has always been quite prominent.

All modern ads to me are very uninventive and lacklustre, following the same pattern, a near naked or expensively clothed women/ man, photographed on a beach or in some stunning luxurious looking place maybe embracing with an equally as perfect looking partner of the opposite sex. Most don’t even feature the opposite sex any more; one famous celebrity like Beckham or a guy with a six pack is enough to sell to the men. And near naked beauties are enough to get the women to buy. The TV ads are my least favourite though, following the same as the printed ads, but getting the subject to say one or two words like “love.....beauty.........desire” and hoping it will sell, which it does!?

But for all my cynicism, I do now see that to sell a product which there is no telling how it is till actually testing it, the ads need to be striking and stick in the memory, which is what their sexual content does. Like it or not, I think sex really does sell, even if it is not for the fantasy the imagery used conjure up like older ads, the newer posters use one arresting sexual voyeuristic

pose in an ad, with the image lit sensually, and the subject looking almost perfection, to grab a reader’s attention and get the name of the perfume stuck in people’s minds. This means next time the viewer goes to buy a perfume, subconsciously all they can think of is that one perfume with that beautiful naked model in its advert, and that’s a sale.

Although I think I’m still sounding very sceptical, I have come to realise after reading this quote “A fragrance doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t stop wetness. It doesn’t unclog your drain. To create a fantasy for the consumer is what fragrance is all about. And sex and romance are a big part of where people’s fantasies tend to run,” Robert Green, vice president of advertising for Calvin Klein, that I have been sold by the ads, as I own an aftershave, something which is not essential in life, without even thinking about it I bought it and wear it, unintentionally in the hope that I smell good to women when leaving the house and going on a night out, just as everyone I know does, so actually the ads work very well.

One of the most memorable ad which brought back the highly sexual, fantasy invoking style of perfume ads after the rut in the 70’s was done by Paco Rabanne in the 80’s. Their huge 2 page spread ads contained a large dialogue back and forth between a man and women, where the woman has just left the male, overloaded with sexual implications from the night before, with the fragrance a recurring theme. The photography was of the room where the male is positioned, the room where the story had occurred the night before. The series of ad’s created quite a stir, with people discussing them in detail, wanting to know what the lover looked like etc. The photos and text helped conjure fantasy in the viewer’s minds, of the perfect sexual encounters which they could have, maybe with the help of this fragrance. Although I’m still not convinced about the content of these advertisements, this one in particular does touch on some ideas I can see to be true, the memory of a smell. When I smell certain fragrances they do create memories of certain people and conjure images in my head, so this advert I have come round more as one of its main ideas contains one lover taking the others fragrance to remember.