Remarkable perfume ads & commercials

The marketing of perfume involves more than just selling an aroma.



"Perfume, in and of itself, is not just an aroma. It is potentially a carrier for the imagination.
Perfume is thick; it is poison and pure desire. It is Eros in prison!"
Serge Lutens


2012/13 campaign by Art Director Fabien Baron, featuring Sean O'Pry.

One of my favourite ads is Habanita’s theme of cigarettes and smoking captured so strikingly beautiful in one monochrome image.


Clearly a commercial must tap into the human psychology and link the brand with a desirable abstract idea, such as passion, femininity or masculinity, to successfully advertise a fragrance.


Yves Satin Laurent by Helmut Newton, 1971

Not surprisingly many perfume advertisements are erotic in nature.


2000 campaign by Creative Director Tom Ford, featuring Sophie Dahl.


I know, this is ice cream, not perfume, but I think it is hot.

What are your favourite perfume ads or commercials?

Edited to restore the images that have been taken down from the web in the meantime.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnwHS3wc1B8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTO4FHf8MBs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ljQDJ4EILc

Chanel do fabulous commercials. I love the one with Audrey Tautou.
How about Marilyn? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo8UtWiYiZI

And another fav of mine.

Yuck, that first photo in MiaTrost's opening post is actually really creepy

Anyhow, my absolute favourite has to be YSL's "M7". The full frontal version, which I am posting below since apparently images of naked women with blotters up their ass are okay too.

Creepy? No.

The early YSL posters are a document for a remarkable historic ad. I think YSL must have been the first to use nude photos of himself for his ad campaigns. This is something special. I don't think there have been many followers until today.

Remark - Unfortunately the above M7 commercial necessitates this thread to be moved to the community section.
Although Parfumo has got no problem with nudity, one of the more popular search engines does.

Yeah, somehow I doubt that woman is the brand owner posing for her own advertising. It *is* creepy.

Oh, this is a misunderstanding. I thought "creepy" was referring to the YSL ad that you posted.

Sure, she is not. But I gather from the pic that Tom Ford does not mind her posing with him.

And btw, your M7 ad was done in 2002, a time TF was Creative Director at YSL ..

Re blotter image: Tom Ford's advertising? Where is that vomit emoticon when I need one

Marc Jacobs did, some 40 years later.

The story of how Chanel finally got their hands on that audiotape of Marilyn after all those years was unexpected, I had no idea. I wonder how much they paid.

Some of the vintage advertising is so charming and whimsical.

This Guerlain ad was designed by Maxfield Parrish:

Removed link, causing the page to go wonkers

Can we look at this one for a couple of weeks? Please... pretty please.

The other perspective is that advertising agencies are another dehumanization factory for naive women, exploiting them and discarding them when their youth and beauty are gone. To be fair, that isn't the only industry known for such treatment -- the music industry, the film industry, and others function the same way.

I've always thought that if you make your appeal to sex, then you are selling sex first, and your product only secondarily. For instance, the Opium ad just makes me want to jack off, not to buy Opium.

If you keep quoting it, you will have plenty of opportunity. Btw, it seems quoting this image meddles with the formatting ..

The ad, however, received a lot of press when YSL launched in 2002. Shock, mostly, and some speculation that advertising was changing. Nothing much happened; most magazines outside France refused to run it and got a more "acceptable" version, featuring the same model from the loin up.
All the fuss really boils down to Oh my god, it's a naked man and you can see everything, oh god oh god!

Is the unexpected sight of a naked man really so threatening and horrifying? Are naked men per se hideous to behold? I thought the ad was nice. The model, Samuel de Cubber, is good-looking and represents an era when men were still hairy. And the ad certainly makes its point: M7 is a scent targeted at men.

True. And the Maxfield Parrish design for Guerlain is sweet.

Yet some ads are just whimsical.

Holy Mother Of God, this one is hot. Where did you find this?

Which is a shame, because the Opium I have smelled is a masterpiece in perfumery.

I am more bored than anything with the countless photos of seductively reclining of naked or scantly clad women regurgitated in perfume adverts over and over again, but this was a thread for discussing favourites, so while we're talking YSL, this inspires me



I'm not quite sure what to make of Bottega Veneta or Bvlgari, though. Why so serious?





Besides the likes of Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Beyoncé, it's really hard to find women of colour cast for big-budget perfume ads. Shame!

I also love Beyoncé and am really looking forward to smelling her newest, "Rise", even though I wasn't that into her previous perfumes:



Lolita Lempicka is cute and lovely as always:



Chanel N°5, for the ladies who enjoyed the M7 post:

Thanx. In case this might not be the most convincing take on Chanel advertising: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRQa33dqyxI

Neither had I. Whatever it cost Chanel to use Monroe's image and words, I reckon it was less than the $7 million they allegedly paid Brad Pitt for his fragrance spot.

Hmm, I wouldn’t restrict it to a dehumanisation factory for women.


I share your critical view to some extent, Silverfire. Yet I doubt that appealing to sex, primarily sells sex and neglects the actual product. But rather – and I am not trying to defend advertising practice – it connects the product/brand with an image and respective emotion it represents for the relevant target group.
I would expect most people in the advertising industry are quite aware of the predominant pressure on men and women alike, to embody eternal youth and beauty and can hence not necessarily be seen as naive. And anyone who feels confined into certain roles and unreal images of whatever, has always got a choice, if only to opt out.

The Opium ad (again Tom Ford, who was creative director at YSL back in 2000) may not appeal to you. Indeed, photographer Steven Meisel caused outrage with this shoot featuring a naked Sophie Dahl sprawled over black satin. One would think that perhaps by then people had seen it all before and would not particularly care about this image either way. But no, because of the model's "sexually suggestive pose" it reportedly attracted over 700 complaints. It was seen to be degrading and offensive. I wonder what makes it so. Her sexuality? Really?

For any man in need of a role model
www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

But... There's something wrong here. They try to sell us tires, snow chains, chain saws, and even 30-ton trucks, through ads with the naked women.
And when it comes to convince us about men's cologne -
suddenly we strike... a naked man!

What is supposed to be the message - "if you have it - you will be like him"?
... or - "Do not bend down"?!

..

P.S. Well, anyway - I have it.
BTW - It works!!
seems indeed I became more hairy.

Well, maybe you'd better stuck to M7.

Rather handsome:

Lmao!

I think the ad was targeted at the women who presumably take care of perfume shopping in some relationships -- "buy the perfume, find this guy in your bed".

Also seriously a great deal of the iconic big-name fashion designers have been and are gay men, so I don't find it at all unlikely that some of those ads are targeted to the gay men out there.

Also this passage from MiaTrost's post made think...


...more about what it is that makes some ads with naked/barely covered women objectionable while others necessarily don't. And I think what sums it up best is that sometimes women's nakedness or provocative poses do not signify sexual agency. In the Tom Ford photo, first on this thread, especially I see a woman thoroughly stripped not only of her clothing but her agency and her presence reduced to plain availability, in this case to make her a sexualized blotter holder, a literal object.

Nor does the Opium model, in my view, express her sexuality in any real sense; again, she suggests availability, not agency. We don't even get to see her face or get an idea of her identity because she, being reduced to an object available for whatever sexual purpose, doesn't need one. And this is the kind of imagery I would definitely call blatantly misogynistic and demeaning. If you want to be squicked even further by the advertising industry, you can read up on Terry Richardson, another of Tom Ford's ad photographers.

I'm sure nobody is even suggesting that men don't face intense pressure to fit into some mold of masculinity but, when girls' self-image and self-esteem often practically crumble when they hit puberty (whereas the boys' typically doesn't), I think I can safely say the pressure is much more intense for girls. And even more so for queer or trans* kids.

The fact that a naked man in a men's perfume ad raises eyebrows whereas naked women in women's perfume ads doesn't should be evidence enough.