Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Drowning in smells

So you use a soap/body lotion, a moisturiser, some talc, deodarent, hair oil/gel/cream, face wash, face scrub, mouthwash, hand wash; shaving cream & after shave(for men); and many more products for women.

Have you tried counting how many of them have a neutral or no smell in them. If you are going by the lastest or the most fashionable of the products, it is very likely that you will find it hard to even find one or two of them with no smell. So in that case you are daily using a concoction of products with smells across the spectrum from sandalwood handwash to menthol shaving cream to walnut face wash to jasmine talc to metal deoderants. Interesting! So what exact smell do you want to convey to yourself and to people around you? 

The more ironic thing about this is apart from the deodarant, most of the other products we use have a smell only when we bring out nose to the product and smell it and many of them are used in such a way that they are washed off(soap, scrub, face wash, shaving cream).
So what significant benefit do these products, each of which comes in tens of flavours really serve? 

Do people buy and use varied smelling products for just the initial virgin smell of it while using it? Do they really want to override the previous smell with the next product they use? Do they think the people close to them will smell all the flavours that they have used?

I dont know if today's marketers' have done any study relating to this. The FMCG marketers are too category focussed to sell their products and I dont think they would have thought of the overall strategic smell a person really wants to emit/give out. Maybe the biggie FMCGs should think about  making products with a strategic smell in mind.

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