Perfume Ads: Sell Your Smell with Smiles, not Snobbery

If I have to watch that ridiculous Depp ‘Sauvage’ advert one more time I swear to god he’ll be joining his jewels in the dirt.

It offends me for so many reasons: the words, the terrible guitar, the inexplicable buffalo… That and I’m watching an actor I once admired have some sort of life crisis both on and off screen. Usually perfume ads use glitz and glamour to dazzle the audience, but Johnny doesn’t even look good enough to distract me from the nonsense he’s spouting. It’s like looking into the eyes of a once-loved pet, knowing they need to be put down.

Of course it’s not the only perfume ad that’s a load of wank – they’re all like it. It’s as if they all had a meeting one day and decided to just give up and go wild. The explanation for it often comes down to having to sell one sense to another – to convert smells into sight. Sure that sounds difficult, until I realise I listen to radio ads about holidays and picture the destinations. We manage sound to sight perfectly well without resorting to reading random words from a French dictionary. Why not just try to explain the bloody perfume?

Sadly, perfume brands seem determined to make ethereal tripe and they’re set on taking celebrities down with them. God knows why actors agree. I’ve smelt Chanel No. 5 enough times to know Keira Knightley is four decades too young for it. Her free samples surely can’t be worth the indignity.

Their presence also only serves to emphasise how awful these ads are. We’ve seen these people act: they win Oscars and awards for their abilities. Yet here they are, drivelling like dementia’s setting in or channelling years of acting training into over-the-shoulder pouts and knowing looks.

I have yet to see a single perfume advert that gives me an idea of how it smells. In the absence of simple description, you have to infer from the pretentiously named ‘films’ what bouquet you’re buying. So I’m going to do what they ask and take a look and smell at some of the offenders.

Exhibit A:

Johnny Depp finds his own attempts at guitar playing so appalling that he drives hundreds of miles to bury his jewellery in the desert.

Smell guess: Sand and the sweat of a desperate man

Exhibit B:

Brad Pitt talks to the camera for 30 seconds and we’re none the wiser. We’re left waiting for a casting director off screen to interrupt with a “Yeah, okay that’s enough Brad. Thanks… No no, we’ll call you.”

The SNL parody skit series is this ad’s saving grace.

Smell guess: Unwashed goatee grease

Exhibit C:

Sad-looking Jared Leto has the most boring threesome of his life with two floaty models, missing a single fake lash between them. Leto also seems to think Gucci is best smelled once washed off in the bath.

Smell guess: Dusty hotel rooms and disappointment

Exhibit D:

Julia Roberts rudely interrupts a dinner party to destroy a house using only the touch of her hand. For some inexplicable reason people still want to be her friend.

Smell guess: Honestly, nothing. I got zip. Can crystals have a smell?

Exhibit E:

Keira Knightley spends 30 seconds being coy, biking to a photo shoot, cock-teasing the photographer, then disappearing before he or the shoot are finished like the consummate professional she is.

Smell guess: Keira’s cleavage, given where she keeps the bottle.

Exhibit F:

A smug Chris Pine gets checked out by everyone he passes in a building that seriously needs its wiring looked at. Tries to kiss a lone lady but is stopped by an explosion that seems like a metaphor for premature ejaculation. The answer is no, I didn’t hear anything, nor smell it, but I can certainly feel the wet patch on your pants.

Smell guess: Nightclubs and burnt out wiring

 

Okay, so it’s not hard to take perfume adverts down a peg or two (they make it stupidly easy) but seriously, we’re just too disenchanted for this shit now. My advice? If they’re going to insist on not selling us a smell, can they at least do so with satire and fun? We’re in desperate need of some. So stop treating us like toddlers with patronising twaddle and make us smile instead.

In that vein, I leave you with the perfection of scent adverts, Old Spice. Take leaf from their book.  Less French, more flirt, and I promise your perfume will be far more memorable.

I’m on a horse.

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