Good evening Mr and Mrs. Perfumista from counter to counter and nozzle to nozzle and all the flacons at sea. Let’s get to this week’s fragrant news.

There weren’t much in the way of new launches announced this week but there was a huge story that took place last Saturday evening on of all places the Home Shopping Network. The result of that story could signal a sea change in how new fragrances are marketed in the future, especially in the celebuscent arena.

To set the stage you should go over to this story, “Smelling Out Sales In Perfume”, at Forbes.com. Within that story we are told that seven out of the ten top-selling luxury fragrances in the US have stayed the same for the past ten years. The article strikes the tone that with that kind of brand loyalty in place, how does a new fragrance compete with a classic? The beginning of the answer comes in the video embedded in that article. The video picks up on the story of the new Mary J. Blige fragrance “My Life”, which Editor-In Chief Michelyn Camen wrote about previously. At the 1:45 point in the embedded video in the article comes a key quote from Theo Spilka VP New Business Development & Licensing Worldwide at Firmenich, “No one is waiting for that next fragrance, so to speak. For the industry in a broad stroke way most fragrances  have a shortened life as  compared to where they were many  years ago. Specifically in the celebrity category….”

This leads to the way “My Life” was chosen to be marketed. “My Life" was sold exclusively on Home Shopping Network (HSN) starting at midnight last Saturday. With Ms. Blige there relating her story behind “My Life” and videos describing the development of the fragrance with the perfumers at Carol’s Daughter who created the perfume under Ms. Blige’s guidance they sold it for 24 hours.

Here was a fragrance which was being sold without a consumer who was buying this fragrance being able to smell it. It was being sold purely on the force of Ms. Blige’s personality and a marketing blitz using a non-brick and mortar strategy.  I like many others were very interested to see what the numbers would be. According to WWD.com when the answer arrived a few days later it would be astonishing.

My Life sold 72,000 units of fragrance and ancillaries in 24 hours which was an HSN record. It generated about $3 million in retail sales……WOW! The pace of sales was so brisk at one point that the HSN website crashed. Ms. Blige was asked to lengthen her on-air time due to customer demand and it clearly translated to sales. All for a fragrance which no one had sampled or sniffed before buying it! Another quite amazing number to me was that about 20 percent of the customers were new to HSN according to Mindy Grossman CEO of HSN Inc.

If Mr. Spilka is correct and the celebuscents have a limited shelf life; then developing a fragrance and getting your willing celebrity on-air in front of that fragrance for 24 hours allows you to sell more in one day than you might in months. The most important part of this is the celebrity in front of the bottle. Ms. Blige had a deeply personal story to tell and she is quoted in the WWD.com story saying, “People at home appreciate a story, someone who can relate to them. They’re sitting on their couch saying, ‘Wow I went through that too.’ It empowers them to want to do exactly what you did and better.” Less prosaically it motivates them to buy.

Not to take anything away from Ms. Blige but I can’t imagine what the roof is on this kind of selling. I wonder what Jennifer Anniston could do on HSN with her latest had she chosen this route? I will be fascinated to see where this all leads. One thing I know, we have definitely not seen the last of this kind of marketing.

It was a slow week in the fragrant blogosphere and there weren’t a lot of posts for me to pick from as many of the bloggers seem to be lying low in these dog days of August. What is starting to happen is we are getting the first looks at fragrances that will be appearing this fall. One of the most anticipated is the new Serge Lutens Boxeuses and Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc posted her review this week and has set many perfumista hearts a flutter with her enthusiastic review including mine.

That’s it for this week my fragrant flock, I hope you have a very fragrant weekend.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor