My Big Fat Gypsy Perfume Industry

Last night, BBC4 aired the first instalment in its new three-part series on the perfume industry.  Peter was unable to watch so I quickly posted a short review on his Facebook page as soon as the show had finished.  It read: "Goodness, Chandler Burr gets lots of samples. Jean Paul Guerlain is a mad, racist old coot. The rest of the industry is run by dollies who genuinely thought Hilfiger Loud was a good idea and not a ridiculous, patronising 'dad dancing at a wedding' take on youth-oriented fragrance."

Let me elaborate...

Mr Burr does indeed receive a great many FedEx deliveries.  Every perfume fan must have turned green at the sight of his freebie stash.  He probably came out of this film as the most sensible, objective contributor, appearing only faintly ridiculous when he rolled up his trouser leg for more scent-testing skin space.  He didn't like some unnamed Bliss fragrance but he loved Thierry Mugler's Womanity.  Later, he kindly explained the dilemma of drugstore distribution for designer fragrance brands.

The venerable but thoroughly unpleasant Jean Paul Guerlain represented the industry's old guard. Of course.  He struggled from luxury car to luxury home to luxury offices, tottering on an ivory-handled walking stick, making misogynistic comments, openly showing his disdain for mass marketing and searching for his ratty little dogs.  Later, we witnessed his monumental fall from grace when he told a TV interviewer how he had "worked like a n*gger" on his scents (although the actual incident wasn't shown or quoted). Demonstrations outside the Guerlain store forced his resignation and replacement by Thierry Wasser.  I suppose it was pleasing to see that some French people do have a concept of egalité after all, despite their monstrous legislation against the freedom of religious expression.

But the bulk of the show seemed to be dedicated to the creation and launch of Hilfiger's Loud fragrances and it all played out like some ridiculous French & Saunders parody of the perfume industry.  In a misguided scramble to combine fragrance with music and bottle "liquid rock and roll" for Mr Hilfiger, Veronique Gabai Pinsky and her international team at Estée Lauder bludgeoned their simplistic strategy home with all the finesse of Pete Townsend finishing up a live set.  As a marketer, I watched incredulously as they struggled to verbalise and realise the concept with any depth or originality.

The flacon was created by Chad Lavigne, "the Picasso of bottle design" apparently.  His mood board appeared to include any old clichéd rock imagery and name-checked acts that haven't troubled the charts since the old king was on the throne.  His design is a heavy-handed reference to a vinyl LP with a volume-control cap.  That the majority of the target demographic may never have even seen a vinyl record, let alone have any emotional connection to them, and are far more likely to adjust the volume of their music with a swipe of a touchscreen rather than twisting the kind of nob found on a Marshall amplifier, didn't seem to matter or even occur to anybody. 

When the concept was presented to Tommy Hilfiger himself, in a brief and inarticulate presentation, raising some concerns about the legibility of the bottle and a quick spritz of the fragrances on blotters was all his go-ahead required.

My dog may have appeared in one of their videos (yes, really) but even I know the Ting Tings were only cool for about a nanosecond a few years ago.  But Veronique squeezes the last gasp of vague credibility from their career by getting them to sell themselves in the Loud advertising campaign. I clenched my buttocks and looked away.

As preparations for the press launch got underway, one particularly hilarious scene saw Trudie Collister from the London Estée Lauder offices berated via speakerphone for failing to secure some patchouli plants, the key note in the fragrance.  When a sorry-looking near-seedling of patchouli did appear, it was odourless.  No matter - they vowed to make it look "pretty" and "extraordinary".  Trudie briefed her staff to ensure that everybody was 'on message' for the press event - apparently the message is that young people use their iPods quite a lot. 

Of course, documentary film makers usually approach their work with some kind of agenda and judicious editing can easily prompt a sneer or a snigger at their subjects.  Here, we saw the "give 'em enough rope" approach, the kind of thing that Louis Theroux does so well.  I'm afraid it left just about everybody involved looking rather silly.

Loud is already available on the discount sites.

          [By ANDREW]