Fragrance Project | Task 1

Four weeks ago, we began our Fragrance project, which is split into four parts:

1. Context & Big Idea
2. Big Ideas & Creative Concepts
3. Creative Concepts & Executions
4. Summative

And on Thursday (9th March), we had the presentations for the 1st quarter of the project. This task was a group work task, which meant that we were put into a group of four and as a group we had to go and carry out both primary and secondary research, generate insights and come up with some ideas as a result of the insights. 

My group started by looking at some secondary research, which included Mintel reports and making perceptual maps (Price vs. Gender, Attitude vs. Age, and Price vs. Age). By doing this we realised that consumers are spending less due to savvy shopping habits, there is a rise in the unisex market, consumers are looking for more personalised products and recommendations and there is a gap in the market for more serious fragrances (not pink, girly and floral) for a younger demographic (16-25) and a higher end fragrance for a younger demographic. 

Each of these secondary research sources provided us with some questions such as "what are the spending habits of men and women like?", "do you think that unisex is becoming more popular?", "do you think men or women are more loyal when buying a fragrance?" and "are there any unusual/new scents?". 

As a result, we took a trip to Birmingham to carry out some primary research and it was actually really productive. We visited the likes of Selfridges, L'Occitane, Jo Malone, The Fragrance Shop, Boots and Neale's Yard and the sales assistants in each of the stores were really friendly and helpful. We found out that:

• women are more loyal to brands rather than individual scents, whereas men are more loyal to scents, which could be why men tend to make more impulse buys.
• there is a gap in the market for a British brand.
• there's a demand for niche, more bespoke fragrances.
• Creed is the most popular brand; it's natural and a perfume, meaning its more concentrated.
• Oud is very popular, especially with Middle Eastern consumers which visit Birmingham a lot (different Selfridges stores sell different fragrances as a result of consumers to each location).

We also found some brands that we were really interested in including Juliette Has A Gun, Eight & Bob, and Replica by Maison Martin Margiela. Each of these brands has a narrative which differentiates itself from other brands. This is something that we would really like to carry through our ideas. 

As well as this, we had a peer review session where members of our seminar group read through our initial ideas and provided constructive feedback. We found that a lot of people were questioning the demographic we were targeting (18-30) as the first thing that came to mind was students with limited spending. Due to the fact that our idea is for a luxury, high end product, we though that we should make our margins smaller to 21-28, as many people in this age group are no longer students, have a career and the disposable income. They also asked if the market has already been covered by the likes of Vivienne Westwood, so we realised that we need to go through what our product is NOT, in order to pinpoint what our products actually IS. Our concept came down to:

• A high end, luxury product, because perfume is still seen as a 'treat'
• Bespoke fragrances - a more personal scent
• Unique, edgy packaging that isn't childish or gimmicky 
• Help with combining scents

Then came presentation day, where we had to make three mood boards on InDesign, under the themes of 'Market and Product', 'Positioning and Promotion', and 'Consumer'. Overall, I think it went really well. Things we have to work on includes how we're going to differentiate ourselves from high end brands such as Tom Ford and we need to actually find our target consumer and talk to them - ask them what they want rather than just making assumptions.

Georgia.xo