Fragrance & Branding: Colette

The marketing of 5 senses, and mainly the smell is a current topic in branding. While branding was usually connected with visual identity, some companies started to build a brand ID based on smell. A not so easy task but effective when well and clever done. Branding a smell is not about candles and finding a nice smell to spray around! It has to be an obsessive and addictive one. The best example I know is Colette. The trendy shop in Paris built a smell around the fig note whose roots can be traced to Premier Figuier (Artisan Parfumeur) or Un Jardin en Mediterrané (Hermès). The big octalactone inside the fragrance smells everywhere in the shop. It's not strong but all the other smells (even the bar downstairs) are put to respect. Even outside there is a fig "aura". I don't know who was the perfumer and who is responsible for the choice of that particular smell… but it was a brilliant move. The fragrance is…addictive and hypnotic, almost like a drug. Every time I open the bottle of octalactone gamma and delta… I see Colette. In Paris there are not a lot of examples of boutique smells - fingerprints. Though I enter very often in most of fashion/design/fragrance shops in the city most of them fail in interior fragrance branding. If you are not able to remember the smell of a boutique by its smell…it's a failure. Besides Colette there is a more sophisticated example: Chanel. They have the same smell inside since years and it's divine and subtle! Something like Coromandel from their Exclusive line.