top of page

EXPLORE OUR BLOG

Discover our articles on the perfume industry, illustration homemade & photography interviews and analyses

The fragrance without muse of Guerlain

  • 18 nov. 2021
  • 2 min de lecture

With La Petite Robe Noire, Guerlain has overturned the usual codes of the image by not being a muse to represent its perfume.

Choosing a muse has become essential in the world of perfume because she embodies a feminine ideal specific to the universe of the brand she represents. Most of the time, the big houses choose an "égérie" because she is the embodiment of the personality of a product. Choosing a muse for the big houses is strategic and necessary because it is the identity that will concretize the brand's essence and directly convey its personality. Present everywhere in advertising campaigns; it makes us almost incapable of conceptualizing perfume without its human representation. Today the muse's personality must have real credibility with the target audience to identify with her. This influential association between the muse and the perfume reflects the history, values and identity often considered timeless to perfume. The muse also makes it possible to draw a lot of attention to the fragrance, create an event, charm, inspire dreams, and sometimes breathe new life.

For its perfume La Petite Robe Noire, Guerlain chose to take the opposite view of its competitors by creating an advertisement without an celebrity but simply with a slender figure walking around Paris wearing a simple black dress. The mark then chose to focus mainly on the chic, elegant, glamorous and luxurious reputation that Guerlain represents. The house has enough confidence in the image its brand evokes with the public to do without a classic muse and play on the essential item of all fashionistas: a little black dress.


With it, La Petite Robe Noire Eau de parfum is plays on the universal codes of fashion and is aimed at women of all generations.


Because almost all women have a black dress in their wardrobe!

Always moving, the faceless figure is playful and refined. Charming illustrations of Deygas and Kuntzel then replace the usual celebrity with an illustration. Each woman can quickly identify with this different character since she has no age limit or no aesthetic codes that would decrease the size of the target.

The brand invites everyone to adorn themselves with this new scent with a touch of good taste, mystery, and simplicity. The brand asserts its unique personality thanks to this one-of-a-kind campaign that is creating a buzz. By standing out from the crowd, the house succeeded in its marketing stunt, rejuvenating its image, which was growing old, and success is there.

The strategy is working to the point that Guerlain now has on its official website a tab dedicated to La Petite Robe Noire with different fragrances, including limited editions. The range has been extended to accessories. A favourite fragrance, the advertisement for La Petite Robe Noire by Guerlain, was elected on the 26th Ipsos Awards as the most striking advertisement of the year in 2012.

Guerlain has taken up its challenge with this perfume and this new range by giving up using an ordinary muse.


I am seduced by the result. And you ?

Can you relate to this illustration, or would you prefer to see the face of a celebrity to represent the perfume?

Flore Brault

18/11/2021


References:

Drawings by Flore Brault




Guerlain and the advertising campaign in BIG for her Black Dress

  • 17 nov. 2021
  • 2 min de lecture

Guerlain is one of the oldest French perfumers who quickly established themselves in the world of perfumery. Thanks to the Eau de Cologne Impériale, created for Empress Eugenie, the house obtained the title of "Her Majesty's Patented Perfumer", and with the success of Shalimar remaining one of the best-selling perfumes in the world, the importance of Guerlain in perfumery is not demonstrating. The brand crosses the generations without taking a wrinkle with its bestsellers, mainly thanks to one of its latest creations.

In 2009, the La Petite Robe Noire perfume created a breath of fresh air for the brand. In the beginning, the fragrance was marketed in a limited way exclusively in Guerlain boutiques and was therefore difficult to access to the general public.


To rejuvenate its brand image and differentiate itself from competitors competing in ingenuity for their fragrance launch campaigns. Guerlain then launched its La Petite Robe Noire campaign. By stepping out of its very luxury universe, which might seem too rigid and adopting resolutely contemporary aspect with great daring, the campaign will created a buzz to the point that the perfume becomes the third best-selling perfume in 2015 in France.


The Guerlain house offered a new intrepid communication that stood out from other ordinary spots. The perfume house thus chooses to trust the evocative force emitted by the name of Guerlain itself. No need for a support muse.


With a chic Parisian atmosphere the advertisement illustrates seduction through a woman who knows how to please men and is aware of her power of attraction. The black silhouette with a slightly vintage connotation and dressed in a little black dress wanders in a graphic universe representing the streets of Paris with a set of decorations known around the world such as the Eiffel Tower, and it charms a large audience. On a musical background by Nancy Sinatra, "These boots are made for walking", the famous faceless muse, dressed simply in Coco Chanel style clothing pieces and wearing a pair of pumps.



It was during Fashion Week that Guerlain decided to introduce the atypical universe of La Petite Robe Noire. Then, not finding the advertising spot sufficiently original, the house decided to intensify its communication campaign via a street marketing device. This is how around 8,000 1m80 silhouettes were displayed by the sign in the streets of major cities in France, including Paris, Nantes, Toulouse, Nice and Lyon. The campaigns invited a preview of the animated film La Petite Robe Noire on the Guerlain.com website. The strange, mysterious figure took on all possible shapes. To appeal to passers-by, it was presented in the form of giant posters covering the facades of buildings, in the 3D cinema or even lit on the mythical columns of Morris Decaux in Paris.


To increase the film's virality, paper campaigns flooded many magazines well known to the general public, such as Elle or Grazia, and large banners were visible on Youtube.


Choosing as a logo a little black dress, aka the essential part of the wardrobe of any woman who loves to seduce, was a good choice for the Guerlain brand.

Flore Brault Custot

17/11/2021



References:


Image:



How brands try creative campaigns but sometimes fail to deliver the message : case of Dior

  • 16 nov. 2021
  • 3 min de lecture

No advertisement can beat a perfume brand in the race for originality. Making a fragrance meaningful to consumers requires the creation of an entire universe: failing to be able to translate the olfactory meaning - which is the only one concerned by a perfume - how to express this fragrance through a video or an image? Beyond activating the visual and auditory senses, it stimulates the consumer's imagination to imagine such a tactile and taste experience to overcome the 2D barrier.


The trouble with these made-up universes is that the message is often too absurd to be understood or seen as such.


As such, one of the most fragile examples was the resounding failure of the advertising campaign of the French group Dior, for the launch of its "Sauvage" Eau de parfum, with the muse Johnny Depp.



Initially, the campaign should represent the image of a freedman, rejecting social conventions for a freer world, deserted (of constraints), the exoticism of travel, the unattainable at hand and still a road trip in wild nature.

Johnny Depp, an icon of world-renowned cinema and claiming as much as possible his attachment to Amerindian cultures, should have been the ideal booster to help this new product gain visibility.


Visibility was there, but not precisely for the right reasons. As soon as the campaign appeared, Internet users rushed in indignation to cry out for the vestige of colonialism and the appropriation of Native American cultures.

Foreign: that is to say, at best, not concerned at all by the subject, at worst coming from a formerly colonialist country. Therefore, an advertisement that should inspire dreams, disorient the average consumer and offer him a trip to unusual regions, was thus very poorly received. Instead, it gave the impression that we were replaying Christopher Columbus by depicting elements of Native American cultures, centred around a white man who was not Native American, moreover for the profit of a brand.

The brand may have defended the core message of its campaign, and Jhonny Depp to justify himself as a Native American ancestor and his adoption by the Comanche nation

- after having played an American Indian in a television series - the result remained the same: a lousy buzz on social networks, which forced them to remove everything. The Parisian HQ of Dior did not give too much thought to the sensitivity of the debate in North America when they chose this universe for their product "Sauvage", intended for an international sale.


Ultimately, through this ad, Dior only succeeded in portraying Westerners' fascination with secular cultures in distress, fading - and this very ironically - because of themselves and their historical actions. Like the polar bear that we admire at the zoo because we have done so well to destroy its habitat that it has become an endangered specimen, we understand that the Amerindians may cringe at the idea that their scarcity makes all their interest their charm in the eyes of multinational firms.


Dior is far from the only brand to be guilty of cultural appropriation, which is commonplace among large groups: we think particularly of the Schweppes advertising, featuring festivities in India, with Nicole Kidman as the star muse. Once again, we find a Caucasian star in the spotlight, having nothing to do with the cultural society of which she is supposed to embody the essence.


Yes, but here it is. Should we only sell "the French art of living" when our name is Dior and refrain from any creative deviation?

Finally, these advertisements are a bit of a reflection of reality: the consumer will buy the perfume that will give him the impression of being exotic and unique, when he is anything but that: he will buy a product of mass consumption, with a generic scent created to appeal to as many people as possible and to be purchased accordingly.


Ayush Kesari

16/11/2021

Presentation by Flore Brault


References:


Images:

A scene from the Dior Sauvage campaign that uses Native American culture. | Courtesy

Johnny Depp stars in Dior's new Savauge ad. | Courtesy

A photo from Dior’s Instagram page. Megan Graham

We will do our best to fulfill your expectations !

Capture d’écran 2021-11-02 à 10.23.21.png
bottom of page