Ideas come from many places

Someday on the left; Lola on the right

    When Justin Bieber's Someday launched, some compared the bottle Marc Jacobs Lola. The bottles, seen side by side, could suggest this comparison.

    But now look at Someday next to this Holm Spray atomizer, produced long before either Someday or Lola.

Holm Spray atomizer on the left; Someday on the right

    Was any one of these bottles an inspiration for any one of the other others? We have no way of knowing but the similarities help illustrate the point that ideas come from many places. For creative people this is important.

    People in the fashion world are famous for traveling to many places -- to get ideas, to see how people in other cultures decorate and wear their clothing or produce fabrics or design their houses. They look, they see, they gain inspiration, they adapt. Sometimes the adaptations are blatant, sometimes they are subtle. But the fuel for the fashion business is creative inspiration. Without it the business would die.

    Likewise the business of fragrance creation. Like fashion designers, perfumers travel the world in search of new smells -- foods, flowers, the rain on the forest floor, damp cotton, a banana leaf "dinner plate" at an open air "fast food" restaurant. The search for new scents powers the perfume industry. Without creativity the industry would die.

    Marketers of perfume also require constant travel, but their "travel" is of a different kind.

    Selling perfume is a competitive business, even if you are just selling to a few friends from your workplace. Even selling to a few friends from your workplace you are in competition with every marketer who is trying to sell them anything. Their funds are limited; their attention is limited. Sales don't come automatically, even from friends.

    Like the fashion designer and the perfumer, the perfume marketer needs ideas -- ideas that will inspire marketing strategies that can launch new fragrances successfully or expand the market for existing fragrances. If you follow the corporate news about major marketers of perfume and follow their advertising campaigns, you quickly notice that "big ideas" that make big sales are rare. Creative breakthroughs are are infrequent, even from highly paid professionals.

    But the larger marketers have the advantage of deep pockets and momentum. A new flanker for an older fragrance can push the franchise through another season. The shareholders might not be impressed with the results but they won't rebel either.

    For a smaller company lack of forward momentum is more of a problem.

    Clever marketing strategies are what give life to small, independent perfume marketers. Survival depends upon fitting into a niche where you won't get crushed by competition.

    But finding your niche is only a temporary solution. Why? Because when others discover what you are doing and that it is profitable, you quickly find yourself with imitators.

    It's not that the latecomers will put you out of business. If you're doing things right you may be well able to hold your own. But fighting off new competition can be costly, especially when the competition is stealing profits from sales that would have been yours.

    So you look for new niches; new opportunities. And where do you find them? Through your travels!

    For the perfume marketer it's not foreign travels that are required. It is "trips" to lands right under your nose, both within the fragrance industry -- the obvious starting point -- and then on into other industries, particularly the more dynamic industries, to mine for marketing strategy gold.

    Sometimes the "gold" isn't easy to recognize. Say you stumble across someone selling a lot of farm tractors. It may take you a second or third look before you realize that this guy is selling a lot more farm tractors than the average farm tractors salesman. Now you start to wonder why.

    Gradually you put it together in your head that this guy has a strategy for what he is doing -- and whether he recognizes it or not, it is a powerful strategy. But getting back to perfume...

    Roll that strategy around in your head for a few days and nights. Ask yourself, "Could what this tractor guy is doing work for my perfume?"

    So the "travels" of the creative perfumer marketer involve getting off the beaten path, where others are using time tested methods of selling perfume (which certainly should not be ignored!) but getting out and seeing what clever people in other industries (or in no industry at all) are doing to market whatever it is they are trying to sell.

    Each month I write a newsletter for our Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. For the first 100 or so issues it has just been called "Club Newsletter" -- not very imaginative.

    For the first 90 or so issues the article were all over the map. But based on needs, the focus has tightened and concentrated on marketing your own perfume. So now I am changing the name from "Club Newsletter" to Perfume Strategies. Uncovering bold marketing strategies and relating then to perfume is the theme of Perfume Strategies. Many of the ideas we have already reported and analyzed are brilliant. And we provide real numbers when we can.

    Even if you are currently marketing perfume, even if you are in need of fresh ideas for marketing strategies to keep your fragrance business competitive, you might not be ready yet for the Perfume Strategies newsletter which you can obtain only through a membership in the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club.

    But I have an alternative for you -- a free alternative. It is our other newsletter called "Perfume Strategies You Missed This Month." It offers synopses of articles which have just been published in Perfume Strategies, along with other useful tidbits.

    Ideas for profitable strategies are the lifeblood of any marketing business. In a fragrance marketing business they are vital.

    Sample what we offer out club members and see if you're not tempted to join us.

    "Perfume Strategies you Missed This Month" is free.

    Subscribe here.