Guerlain targets digital natives in France with Olfaplay podcasts for scent lovers

By

Sarah Ahssen

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Dec 13, 2018

Keen to establish a community of fragrance lovers, perfumery label Guerlain has recently launched the Olfaplay website in France.

With an app alongside the website, Olfaplay features podcasts of nine minutes or less, in which fragrance lovers tell the stories of their olfactory memories.

The French fragrance label, with a range of nearly 110 perfumes, allows each of the site's registered users to record their scent story in podcast form. Among testimonials from anonymous aficionados, there also are the stories of Thierry Wasser, Guerlain’s fragrance designer, and the memories from the African continent of Burundian princess Esther Kamatari.

Through Olfaplay, Guerlain is trying to broaden its scope, by putting in touch with each other people with a shared olfactory history, and may even launch a perfume inspired by some of the anecdotes.

It is not the first time that Guerlain aims for the highly coveted digital-native consumer target, people who, unlike their elders, are keener to buy make-up rather than perfume. At the start of 2018, to support the launch in France of Mon Guerlain, a floral eau de parfum whose brand ambassador is Angelina Jolie, Guerlain sponsored La Poudre, a feminist podcast by the former Editor-in-chief of Elle France, Lauren Bastide, for three months.

Besides attracting a new clientèle, fragrance labels must also try to reconnect with former customers. According to market research firm Kantar, the selective perfumery market lost more than two million customers in France in five years.