Dollars and Scents : Some Magazines Are Rethinking Those Perfume Ads
Just about everything makes Cecilia Wright itch. She wears gloves to pet her horse--and she makes banana splits without ice cream because the dairy products give her red blotches.
Few things, however, make the Burbank resident itch more than those pungent perfume ads known as fragrance strips--which one maker calls Scent Strips. They are commonly stuck into magazines such as Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan to give consumers a sniff of what their producers say is the good life.
“If I accidentally rub one of those ads, I’m in big trouble,” said Wright, a collection agency executive who said simple contact with a perfumed ad causes bumps to break out on her skin. “Why can’t publishers find advertisers somewhere else?”
Well, a few are. Among them, the New Yorker said earlier this month that it was washing its hands of fragrance strips--at least until the ads stop smelling quite so pungent. And the editor of the new Men’s Journal magazine told readers in its premiere issue that his magazine is determined “not to accept Scent Strips.”
This is the fragrance strip season. Half of the perfume sold this year will be peddled between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s why many consumers will smell the December issue of Vanity Fair before they see it. The issue has five fragrance strip ads--an unofficial record for a single issue, according to the Magazine Publishers Bureau.
Department stores used to be the most popular place to sample perfume, but fragrance firms say they now rely upon these scented ads as their best sales tool. More than half of all perfume purchased last year was first sampled in magazines, according to estimates by several fragrance industry executives.
Meanwhile, in tough times, many magazines have come to view these ads-with-fumes as revenue boosters. Last year, fragrance advertising in magazines exceeded $93 million, according to Leading National Advertisers, a New York-based advertising research firm. Magazines don’t just make money from inserting the fragrance strips, but from the numerous pages that the advertisers buy with them.
But, in growing numbers, consumers are complaining about the ads.
Some simply don’t like them. Others, like the glove-wearing Wright, are allergic to them. Wright still remembers the time she suffered for days after accidentally leaving a fragrance-filled magazine in her car parked in the Burbank heat. “It did a meltdown,” she said.
Wright’s allergist says sniffing perfume-laden ads can be as dangerous for people with severe allergies as walking by department store perfume counters. But, said Stuart Epstein, a Beverly Hills allergist, “I can’t ask my patients to stop reading magazines.”
Several magazines are doing their best to clear the air.
“Readers told us it was intrusive in their lives,” said Steven T. Florio, president of the New Yorker, which recently announced that it won’t accept the fragrance ads again until they stop smelling up the magazine. “Readers wrote to us saying that they buy the New Yorker to be moved by its words, not by its smell.”
Florio estimated that the magazine will lose up to $250,000 each quarter by not running the ads.
Perhaps even riskier is a decision by Men’s Life to discourage fragrance ads.
“We don’t want to offend our advertisers,” said Editor John Rasmus. “But when you start a magazine, you don’t want to go out of your way to annoy readers either.”
And annoy they do. A recent survey of 1,000 people on fragrance strip ads revealed that 29% of those interviewed disliked them.
“That’s a very, very strong dislike factor by any measure,” said Dick Hare, president of Bruskin Goldring Research, the Edison, N.J., firm that took the survey. “When there’s that much smoke, there’s got to be fire.”
Actually, fewer than 50 magazines regularly carry fragrance ads--most of them aimed at women. And almost all of the magazines have recently begun to offer scent-free copies to those readers who specifically request them--but few magazines want to publicize this policy.
Typically, the unwanted fragrance odors escape from scented ads when the adhesive seals fail to stick. But Allure magazine recently began to test a new “rub and sniff” technology that emits very little odor before being rubbed. And Elle magazine recently enclosed an entire issue in plastic wrap and sent it--along with tiny vials of perfume--to readers.
Magazine and fragrance industry executives concede that there is a problem.
In fact, magazine executives have twice toughened their own voluntary guidelines, hoping that they would put an end to consumer complaints, said Donald Kummerfeld, president of the New York-based Magazine Publishers of America.
“Obviously, they haven’t,” he said.
Fragrance industry executives aren’t pleased with the complaints, either.
“The last thing you want to do is to have people feeling negative about your product,” said Edward Kavanaugh, president of the Washington-based Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Assn.
Industry executives are especially concerned about growing sentiment to regulate the ads.
A law took effect in California earlier this year requiring magazine distributors to keep scents from escaping from the ads before the fragrance strips are opened. The California law, however, has little muscle since violators can only be fined $100 for each mass mailing of an offending publication.
Some consumers are so annoyed by fragrance strips that they have canceled subscriptions to magazines.
Still, many magazine publishers believe that the risk of losing some readers pales in comparison to the larger risk of losing the fat advertising revenue from fragrance ads.
“Magazines will not say no to Scent Strips until readers complain in great numbers,” said Steve Ellwanger, editor of Inside Media, a New York-based trade publication. “Eventually, magazines will get so thick with these things that they’ll smell like department stores and feel like catalogues.”
Briefly . . .
The 6-year-old Los Angeles agency Vogel Communications Group has closed, but several of its clients and a handful of its employees have been absorbed by DDB Needham/Los Angeles. . . . The Hajjar/Kaufman ad agency has opened in Marina del Rey, with Canon Computer Systems of Costa Mesa as its first client. . . . Korean car maker Kia, which plans to launch a U.S. distribution arm in Irvine next year, has received hundreds of inquiries from agencies eager to land its $15-million account. . . . The Santa Monica agency Kresser/Craig Advertising has won the $2.6-million ad account for the California Department of Conservation’s division of recycling. . . . San Diego-based Franklin Stoorza has been handed the $1-million account for Del Mar-based Sassaby, a cosmetic kit firm. . . . The eclectic New York agency Kirshenbaum & Bond is preparing to open a Los Angeles office. . . . The Advertising Club of Los Angeles’ Magazine Day Conference begins at 8 a.m. Wednesday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. . . . Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency has hired Richard Donner, director of the “Lethal Weapon” hits, to direct several TV spots for Coca-Cola. . . . Oldsmobile has begun broadcasting ads vowing that General Motor’s embattled car division “isn’t throwing in the towel.” . . . Creative Works of Irvine and Roddan Public Relations & Advertising of Redondo Beach have been hired to market Smithcliffs, a Laguna Beach residential real estate development. . . . Phillip Joanou, creator of “Partnership For a Drug-Free America” and chairman of the LA agency Daily & Associates, was named “advertising leader of the West” at the American Advertising Federation’s Western Conference in Las Vegas.
