WHEN new perfumes are introduced, fragrance companies typically mount introductory advertising campaigns that run widely in women’s fashion magazines, often including sample strips.
But to introduce a new perfume named for the singer Rihanna, Parlux Fragrances initially is focusing its marketing efforts primarily on an online video to be introduced by Friday.
The new scent, Reb’l Fleur by Rihanna, is, as its name suggests, meant to evoke both the rebellious and flowery sides of the singer, and a video featuring her that is the centerpiece of an online campaign also depicts that duality.
But to introduce a new perfume named for the singer Rihanna, Parlux Fragrances initially is focusing its marketing efforts primarily on an online video to be introduced by Friday.
The new scent, Reb’l Fleur by Rihanna, is, as its name suggests, meant to evoke both the rebellious and flowery sides of the singer, and a video featuring her that is the centerpiece of an online campaign also depicts that duality.
For half of the one-minute video, by Droga5, a Manhattan agency, Rihanna lounges in an oversize flower and glides around a lush topiary garden wearing a peach dress and smiling. Then, Alice-like, she steps through a mirror and is suddenly wearing a black dress and a come-hither expression, and is embraced by a dark stranger wearing a tuxedo.
A specially designed video player enables users to choose to run the video in either direction, which of course conveys different situations, such as the singer stepping toward the man in one mode and backing away from him in another.
When the page is uploaded, the frame frozen on the video is at the 30-second point, as Rihanna’s nice and naughty personae gaze toward one another from either side of the mirror, and viewers may proceed in either direction. The video is expected to be uploaded to rihannareblfleur.com, and a simplified version will appear on video-sharing Web sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
What viewers may find mind-boggling is that the video was choreographed to make it difficult to determine in which direction it was originally filmed. There are no obvious giveaways — say, flower petals being plucked in one direction and the petals being reattached in the other.
Misha Louy, an executive producer at Droga5 who worked on the video, explained that in some shots Rihanna was even filmed walking backward, or was directed to walk forward in such a way that when the video was played in reverse it “wouldn’t look like she was moonwalking backwards.”
Also palindromic, as the agency refers to the video, is the soundtrack, which was composed to play the same notes for each frame, irrespective of direction.
The goal, naturally, is for the video to go viral, and Droga5 is projecting that it will be viewed more than 20 million times. What makes that more realistic than it may sound is the staggering popularity of Rihanna, whose music videos combined have garnered more than a billion views on YouTube and who has about 24 million followers on Facebook and more than 3.2 million on Twitter. The singer will direct fans to the video through both of those social networks.Parlux, a 28-year-old company based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also produces fragrances named for other celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Nicole Miller and Queen Latifah.
As for how much input celebrities have in designing their perfumes, Frederick E. Purches, the founder and chief executive of Parlux, said some were particularly influential, like Rihanna. When perfume designers first met with the singer, “she would come into the meeting with a very unique smell, and people would say, ‘What are you wearing?’ and she would rattle off five fragrances that she had mixed and layered,” Mr. Purches said.
Perfume designers then analyzed those brands, which Mr. Purches declined to name, and incorporated fragrance notes from all of them in the final formulation of Reb’l Fleur, he said.
Reb’l Fleur “may seem almost bipolar with its juxtaposition of garisher notes on a harder-to-detect discreet aroma of classicism,” Marie-Helene Wagner wrote in a recent review on The Scented Salamander, a fragrance blog. “The first part may well send you the message that if you don’t identify with a girly, flaming red singer, then there isn’t much left for you to smell. But if you persist, then there is an anchoring of the scent which is extremely classic, light, restrained, ladylike and soft.”
Packaged in bottles that resemble stiletto heels, because Rihanna has a fondness for them, the fragrance has a suggested retail price of $49 for 1.7 ounces and $59 for 3.4 ounces of perfume, and $30 for 6.7 ounces of body lotion.
For Parlux, the campaign invests an unprecedented amount of resources into an online campaign. But it also relies on more traditional advertising. Reb’l Fleur billboards featuring Rihanna were scheduled for monthlong runs beginning Feb. 7 on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and Feb. 14 in Times Square. Rather than introducing scents as it often does, magazine advertising will bring up the rear, appearing in the April issue of Lucky and the May issues of Juicy and People Style Watch.
For three months beginning in April, the perfume also will be advertised in 363 movie theaters on 1,903 screens. A 30-second spot will be an edited version of the online video, and as moviegoers exit the theaters representatives from the brand will hand them scented cards. The brand expects to hand out about seven million of the cards, offering them not to everyone but rather to the target demographic for Reb’l Fleur: women 18 to 24.
In all, the campaign is expected to cost $4 million to $5 million. It represents “the biggest launch we’ve had for some time” for Parlux, said Mr. Purches, the founder of the company.
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The popularity of a celebrity does not alone guarantee success for an eponymous perfume. The tennis players Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick are popular, but Mr. Purches noted that fragrances his company began producing about five years ago through licensing deals with both players had not sold well.
“People looked at these people sweating on the court and said, ‘No, I don’t need that fragrance,’ ” Mr. Purches said.
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