what is the future of fragrance campaigns?

Over 2000 years ago, before roman soilders went to battle they would wash themselves in rosewater. At the time, the floral scent was closely associated with masculinity and strength - but that isn't the story the fragrance industry is portraying today. Campaigns are constantly changing and businesses are changing their campaign stories to relate to new, modern conversations. Over the past couple of decades a huge story used to sell fragrances have been sex - and using provokative campaign imagery to intise in the consumer.

The recent market has changed a huge amount since the Roman times, with florally scents being feminine whilst masculine scents are woodier and more powerful.

However, Today's market focuses hugely on the idea of 'gender binary' - I huge social change happening at the moment, florally scents are no longer restricted to a gender and gone are the days where bottles are genderised using a colour (no more pinks just for girls and blues just for boys).

Calvin Klein probably started one of the biggest unisex fragrances in 1994 with CK One. Something quite simple - casting a bunch of the worlds favourite male and female models (uncluding Kate Moss) and having them promote a fragrance - so simple but yet nobody had done it yet. But this revolutionised the open-mindedness of the fragrance industry. The bottle was clear and ambigious and a wild success, at one point selling 20 bottles a minute! Showing the fragrance industry was hungry for a rebellious fragrance.

Perfumaries sucs as Le Labo and Diptyque have started to pave the way for a more liberally minded fragrance industry - however this isnt down to their beliefs about gender but their beliefs of making the perfect scent. Restricting ingredients such as rose only to females has meant a lack of these scents in male fragrances, but they want to go against the rules and make their perfumes for scent not for gender, Independent perfumaries such as Diptyque push their skills and knowledge of ingredients into their campaigns, using very natural and neutral campaign imagery.

Customers in general, espeically gen Z are leaning towards more engaging more with more natural campaigns over the major hypersexual and abstract campaigns. In a time when everything is aired on social media, its hard to distinguish between fake/false advertisements and genuine partnerships so from a consumer point of view I think this makes total sense as to why consumers want more down to earth, inclusive and natural fragrances and campaigns.