I came across the holiday disc for Febreze Scentstories the other day in KMart. What a disappointment. I'm no closer to wanting to buy one of those players than I ever was before. Here are the scents on it:
1. Mulling Cranberry Cider
2. Baking Holiday Pies
3. Lighting a Mulberry Candle
4. Making a Gingerbread House
5. Cookies Warm from the Oven
How lame. They should've listened to my suggestion for what to put into a holiday disc. What they've come up with is a big yawm. It starts out well--spiced cranberry is always a good idea for the holidays, and the holiday pies thing is also good, if unimaginative. But then they go to this 'lighting a mulberry candle.' If this were a real story, as in a written narrative, that would be the point at which I threw the book in the garbage. I mean, how is that supposed to fit into an interesting holiday narrative?! And do you light the candle for 30 minutes?!?! More importantly, however, mulberry is LAME. It's the ultimate cheap shizzly scent--that's the reason why you can find a mulberry candle in every Wal-Mart and discount store in the country. Personally I think most mulberry scents smell like a bathroom--they remind me of those urinal cakes with the unpleasant odor, for some reason. But furthermore, if you already have a cranberry-type fragance, why would you then do a mulberry-type one for the next 'movement'??! It's stupid. Then the disc moves to gingerbread and then cookies. It seems like this scent category should've been covered in the holiday pie part. In fact, there shouldn't have been a holiday pie one--maybe gingerbread should've been there. If they were going to put another gourmand type scent, why not spiced eggnog? As for the disc as a whole, WHERE is the pine?!?! You'd think that pine would be a necessity, right? Even if you're trying to appeal to people of every religious stripe, pine is still a benchmark of the holiday season--it's in all the stores; there's even a pine wreath in their marketing!! (And let's be serious here--who is possibly buying these Scentstories things, anyway? I really doubt that a huge part of the market for it is Jewish and Muslim families. Personally I think the people who are buying it are married women in middle America who wear those homemade holiday sweatshirts and vastly self-identify as Christian.) And while some might consider a pine scent hackneyed, I would argue that a really WELL DONE one (like Yankee Candle's Christmas Wreath) isn't trite, but rather, it's timeless. So the Febreze people really dropped the ball on this one. The job they did is especially pathetic considering the plethora of scents they could've chosen from for a holiday disc: clove-orange ("making a pomander"); peppermint ("making candy canes"); cocoa ("making holiday cocoa"); bayberry ("standing under the mistletoe"); 'hollyberry' ("making a holiday wreath"), etc.... All in all I'd give their holiday effort an F, because it lacks any semblance of imagination or even boldness (they could've put interesting, lush scents in there, but they played to what was safe). I can't see that I will ever buy one of those scentstories contraptions now; they're destined to be permanently lame--hopefully they'll be withdrawn from the market within the next 6 months.
In other news, I caught the commercial for Chanel's No 5 last night, the little mini-movie with Nicole Kidman. The 'movie' itself is quick-cut and attractively shot. I think it moves a little too quick to be understood--it comes off as a bit incoherent. I think it's supposed to be moving; it's not. Interestingly, Nicole Kidman doesn't look as pretty as she should in the commercial. You'd think that since it was produced by a beauty company, they would make her look even more luminescent, which is what usually happens when an actress does an ad campaign for a cosmetics company. Not this time. Part of it is that butter-yellow blond hair she has in it, which doesn't really look good on her. The rest, I guess, is the makeup. (Or maybe she's just too thin.) Does the commercial do a good job of selling No. 5? Well, it works about as well as their magazine ads, and if it intends to make younger people interested in wearing the perfume, then I suppose it's successful. Was it worth the $12 million they paid Nicole Kidman to do it? Probably not. But then if you're Chanel, I guess that kind of $ doesn't really matter, does it?
And that's the fragrance beep for today.
4 comments:
Thanks! I'm definitely going to check that site out!
I got a Scentstories machine for my birthday, and I think it's great, although I don't have the holiday disk you mention. The "story" idea is a bit of a stretch, but since the fragrance changes every 1/2 hour, it keeps your nose from getting used to the scent so it's more noticeable than an air freshner-type Plug-In or something.
Scentstories: Do the scents smell natural, though?
There's one disk called "Hiking Up A Mountain Trail" or something like that, and there's a really good smell on it (Gazing At the Fir Trees or something like that) that smells a lot like Pert Plus (in a good way). I have to say they don't smell especially natural, but it's pleasant. You're not really going to get "natural" from a machine.
I think the best - and coincidentally the most expensive and shortest-lasting - commercial air freshener dealies are the Yankee Candle company frangrance oil diffusers - have you tried those? They have them at that store you always go to - Bed Bath and Boyfriends.
Ooh, and I just thought of another thing you might be interested in - I make soap sometimes and so I buy fragrance oil from a few places online. If you ever want to buy fragrance oil you should look at www.sweetcakes.com (they have a very good fake Angel) and www.thescentshack.com (the almond fragrance oil is yummy). The Scent Shack lets you get a 6 fragrance sampler for 6 for $10.
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