Celeb Fragrances Fading Fast?
Just as singers Mariah Carey and Britney Spears come out with their respective fragrances, the New York Daily News comes out with an article about how celebrity fragrances are bringing down perfume sales. With the exception of Britney Spears’ perfumes, other celebrity-branded fragrances aren’t successful. What’s the main reason? Various average consumers don’t want a celebrity-endorsed product, especially if it’s associated with an actress/singer/celebutante most people don’t care about. What self-respecting woman over 21 would wear Hillary Duff or Paris Hilton perfume? Or what man, for that matter, would find himself wearing Paris Hilton for Men or a David Beckham scent, especially when many classic colognes still smell better?
As mentioned in the article, blind tests of these fragrances showed that the subjects found the fragrances pleasing but, as soon as the celebrity-endorsed name was revealed, the testing subjects no longer liked the brand. Britney Spears perfume, as long as the pop star remains relevant, continues to sell well overseas. Then again, so did Michael Jackson albums after 1992. Once Spears’ career is officially over, her scents will probably do as well as MJ’s Invincible did on American shores in 2002. Other celebrity scents aren’t as lucky but, as long as the artists are selling albums or films, the fragrance aspect of their brand empire is somewhat insignificant.
Celebrity fragrances aren’t usually released independently but through larger names like Coty and Elizabeth Arden. Would these larger brands continue to thrive without the endorsements? Coty, for example, had a hit with Exclamation perfume (the bottle shaped like a black exclamation point, if you don’t remember) in the late ‘80s but over the past fifteen years, most of its products are celebrity related, with the exception of Adidas scents for men and women. Elizabeth Arden, on the other hand, has a plethora of scents and cosmetics to the brand, especially with classics like Red Door, so survival without celebrity perfumes for this particular brand is a given.