How your favourite perfume brands use storytelling to sell scents online

So much of buying, using and wearing a perfume is based on the association you have to a particular scent. But how do you do that when you’re shopping through a screen?

Last year, I ordered a perfume called ‘Fat Electrician’ online. I was looking for a fragrance that was sweet (but not too saccharine), woody (but not too nature-y) and had a hint of vanilla. There were a lot of perfumes that matched that criteria; it’s a popular category. But how do you pick a perfume that you’ve never taken a whiff of? How do you know the way it will melt into your skin or the way it will smell after a couple of hours of wear? I decided to pick based on the perfume’s description.

Some descriptions told me what the notes were, but it’s not like I could imagine the composition in my head, so this route didn’t really work. Eventually, I picked the Etat Libre D’Orange one because it had the strangest possible description of all, and also somehow reminded me of someone I knew: “Youth for women-of-a-certain-age, stock for late-night parties, a partner to accompany the wealthy of Palm Beach on nature walks, his splendor is consumed in the service of others. Now, a Fat Electrician in New Jersey, his talent depleted in his sexual decline. This is the curse of beauty–it doesn’t last.”

It didn’t make any sense—how was I to know at all what this smelled like? No perfumer is sure of the association that you and I would make with the scent, but they’re relying on the fact that they’re able to tap into a memory, a past experience, an inside joke or a story that lets you make a connection that would make sense to you. That’s the thing: storytelling lets you link perfumes to specific emotions or memories that are extremely personal to you.

The connection between scent and memory

“Scents are directly linked to nostalgia and if there is anything that can smoothly transport you to memories, places and people of the past, it has to be something that enhances the five senses. For that very reason, we’re working towards creating anti-perfume perfume blends, which work with juxtaposing ingredients that still have a lingering familiarity and a sense of the known,” says Astha Suri, founder and creator director of Naso Profumi. That is why you remember the warmth of home when you breathe in freshly baked cookies, or the languidness of a summer holiday upon taking a whiff of sunscreen.

Scientists believe that smell and memory are very closely linked because the anatomy of the brain allows olfactory signals to get to the limbic system, ASAP. “Our scents are constructed with very specific objects, plants and places in mind so as to whisk one away to a certain situation (the wild west, an island in the sea, the flower market in Vasant Vihar and so forth). What's cool is perhaps the fume hits you in a particular way that is unique—so there is the individual connection as well as the collective space we can all share inside the scent,” says David Moltz, co-founder of DS and Durga.

Telling the story through words and photos

While it might be romantic to think about the connection between smell and memory, how does a fragrance brand market their product to a consumer through ads, packaging, bottle design, descriptions and social media, when, technically, the only good ad for a perfume is the actual scent?

Some perfumers like to focus as much as they can on the ingredients and the brand story. “Our brand is an ode to some of the most beautiful perfumery naturals that we have sourced personally, sometimes from some very offbeat locations. This is the story that we love to tell, the story of what goes into the bottle, from how we sourced it to the process of distillation to extracting the essential oils, right up to the bottling of the perfume in a lab,” says Manan Gandhi, founder of Bombay Perfumery.

For instance, the brand named one of their scents ‘Chai Musk’ because it was inspired by the perfumer’s memory of sipping masala chai at a Mumbai tapri. Even if you haven’t smelled the perfume yet, you likely have your own memory of a funny conversation that you’ve had while sipping chai, which might entice you to buy the bottle, thanks just to the name. “I think this story has definitely intrigued many people and driven up the sales of the perfume. It's been seven years and it remains one of our bestsellers,” says Gandhi. Some like to connect it to other art forms. “We try to give words to fragrance through the suggestion of colour and other artistic disciplines.” confirms Moltz.

When it comes to photographing for Instagram and adverts, brands are attempting to create a vibe to let you know what the perfumes they have stand for. “We navigate ways to creatively feel the scent before shooting it. We play with various factors to illustrate the mood and narrative of the scent through its photos. Scent is directly linked to your mood, and we, through our Instagram, suggest an ambience of self-enhancement and chill,” says Suri.

To describe the mood even more, the DS and Durga team go a step further. “I like to translate an idea from one discipline to the next. I could make a scent from a painting, and a dish inspired by a photograph. The reason it's simple for us is because we make all of our fragrances—they are not filtered through an outside perfumer. So it's easy to describe each scent in a playlist, pictures, words, movies and, of course, aroma,” says Moltz.

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