Perfumes and fragrances are products made from either natural or (usually) synthetic materials that are meant to appeal to the sense of smell. While consumers can choose from a range of fragrance options such as bath oils, splashes, toilet waters, aftershave lotions, body sprays, and colognes, perfumes are usually the most highly priced fragrances.
American companies began manufacturing essential oils for soaps and other products during the 19th century, especially after the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania boosted synthetic production. Most of the earliest American essential oil houses were based in New York City, given its access to crude spices, processed oils, and French fragrances. Despite the emergence of some domestic perfumeries, the French, with their reputation for high-class (and highly priced) scents, dominated the business. For decades, advertisements for the French perfume Joy employed the tagline “the costliest perfume in the world” as a selling point. During the mid 20th century, several American cosmetic companies successfully branched into perfumes, and they have marketed scents at prices affordable to a larger number of Americans, selling them in department stores and even drug stores rather than just exclusive boutiques. The California Perfume Company, which changed its name to Avon in the 1930s, was very successful at marketing inexpensive perfumes, fragrances, and cosmetics to the working classes through door-to-door sales. The American perfume business, like cosmetics generally, led to economic opportunities for many nontraditional entrepreneurs. Some of the most successful American companies, such as Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, and Estée Lauder, were started by women, and Arden and Rubinstein were both first-generation immigrants.
In recent decades, perfume companies have continued to expand their market into the middle classes by suggesting that perfume need not be reserved for special occasions. One of the most successful perfume ad campaigns was for Charlie, beginning in 1973. For this product, Revlon capitalized on the women’s liberation movement by featuring a strong, liberated woman wearing pants in the ads. Sales of the fragrance exceeded 10 million dollars during the year of its launch. Throughout the 1970s, this type of lifestyle advertising, often featuring career women, was very popular.
During the 1980s, pricier fragrances marketed by designers and celebrities (such as Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins) became increasingly profitable. Taylor’s Passion enjoyed long-term success; however, most celebrity scents, including Collins’s Spectacular, Cher’s Uninhibited, and Julio Iglesias’s Only had a short shelf life. In the United States, designer Calvin Klein marketed Obsession with explicitly sexual black and white advertisements, and many other perfume advertisers followed his example. However, as Americans came to grips with the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s, advertisers began to tone down the nudity and sexuality in their advertisements. Through the 1990s, popular scents such as Estée Lauder’s Beautiful and Calvin Klein’s Eternity emphasized marital commitment in their advertising campaigns. In the 21st century, just as in the mid 20th century, perfume advertisements using appeals to sexuality, romance, and prestige dominate the pages of women’s magazines during the months of November and December, in hopes of winning holiday customers’ eyes.
Leave a Reply