Message in a bottle – why scent/brand alignment matters

With the increasing demand for true naturals in the cosmetic industry worldwide, essential oils are playing a bigger role in the scent aspect of cosmetic products. There is a proliferation of information on the web and social media about both the emotional and psychological aspects of using essential oils, but less is being discussed about the connection and alignment between brand and scent.

We are often asked about the process of developing scents for customers. And whilst it would be simple enough to just say we offer a form, get the customers to fill it out and join the dots from there, the process first and foremost begins with understanding how the brand wants to connect with its audience through the use of natural scent.

Misalignment can occur when the brief is not fully fleshed out and scent is left to the end of the R&D process. The key really is to understand why consumers will gravitate to your brand and how both the functional and emotional aspects of the scent are considered from the start.

Great alignment works best when the consumer immediately connects emotionally with the brand intent.

A fantastic example of this is our recent work with a brand who were creating a product that highlighted marine based actives and so to compliment, they wanted a unique aroma that was reflective of the ocean.

Now “the ocean” is a very broad description, so the first question we asked when approaching this task was where do the actives come from? Here we uncovered that since the actives came from Northern Europe, our unique blend should reflect cooler ocean waters. To achieve a psychological pairing of product with scent, the Aromatica Botanica team created a custom blend centered on a cooling, calming scent with a sophisticated edge.

But considering the functional capabilities of a product is just as important when crafting the sensory experience.

For functional capabilities, we used several herbal oils that had complimentary calming benefits. From both a practical and aesthetic point of view, chamazulene-rich Blue Tansy oil was a perfect choice, offering a very light blue hue to the product. Finally, to top it all off, we blended a small amount of Peppermint oil to provide a slight cooling effect.

In final formulation, the client used our blend at between 0.2%-0.3% resulting in a beautiful, lightly scented product that has cooling benefits and stunning marine-like blue colour.

So whether the product was made from actives derived from Northern Europe or the Mediterranean, the same process applies to produce a custom blend that most organically conjures a sensory experience – connecting product with story, customer with brand.

As another example, we recently had a brand wanting to re-develop their scent range because they understood there was a misalignment between scent and brand messaging. The client felt that their scents, which were being used at a relatively high ratio in their end product, weren’t sophisticated enough to match the intended market.

As the RRP was already set, the first thing we needed to do was define the budget since the client wanted to keep the existing cost of the product exactly where it was. As they had been using cheaper oils, we had the idea that bringing down the blend level in the end product would allow them to open up a wider palette of oils. This strategy slightly increased the budget for the blend without affecting the cost of the end product.

By simply bringing the end usage of blend down from 0.8% to 0.4%, we were able to introduce more expensive oils and absolutes into the scent. The scent percentage decrease was more aligned to the brand messaging while the wider palette of individual oils gave the brand the class edge they were looking for. To date this change in strategy has been successful and allowed the brand to open into many more markets.

Scent/brand alignment wins through by connecting with customers on a psychological level – yet it’s the detail-orientated, considered and creative approach that gets you there.