How Byredo gets me

Byredo has asserted itself as a very successful perfumery brand, adored by the slightly edgy but luxury-loving fragrance aficionado. Their strong social media presence especially translates into the amount of influencers, as well as beauty writers and reviewers, who have at least one of their scents always conveniently posed on their bedside table or vanity. The epitome of the niche turned famous.

Byredo's latest launch has shown great results so far and I personally would give a lot of credit to their marketing strategy. The Instagram posts announcing the launch show a fissured or broken perfume bottle to mirror the emotional state of their potential customers. Using the “it's okay not to be okay” message behind this campaign, Byredo engaged with what their potential customers have been struggling with for more than a year now: the covid pandemic. By doing so, the product is personified and given the ability to care about, understand and empathise with the customer's feelings. This turned the purchase of their new fragrance into a personal and emotional experience, conveying a message customers can connect with on a deeper level.

The fractured glass of Byredo's perfume bottle is the embodiment of that message. Even their beautifully designed bottles are validated in their feelings and are allowed not to be okay. This entertains the personal connection between the commodity and the customer and creates this sense of understanding and empathy. This fragrance gets me. The brand successfully channelled the image of beauty (and specifically fragrance in this case) as self-care. Purchasing their newest scent is no longer presented as a splurge, but rather an act of kindness towards yourself and your current emotional and mental state.

Although I admire Byredo’s marketing strategies, I can’t help but wonder what it means for consumers. Of course I respect and admire the craft behind fragrance creation and consider it an art, but there is a fine line between encouraging an emotional response and exploit said emotions. Even though launching a product that understands and empathises with Byredo’s audience is suggesting that the brand as a whole shares these feelings, is it right to provoke an emotional attachment to an object through advertising? To provoke an emotional attachment to a new product without deeper sentimental value — compared to a family heirloom for example — is to encourage materialism and consumerism. Especially when advertising a product incentivises purchases and generates profits.

Of course, what else could a brand ask for but for customers to buy their creations. As a customer myself, it is difficult to be sure whether I can trust Byredo’s marketing team to have their customers’ best interests at heart, and to know for a fact that creating a fragrance with their customers’ emotions in mind was their own way of supporting them through these globally difficult times. A small part of me wonders if, instead, they saw a personal and emotional angle as extremely profitable without caring about each and every one of their customers. I shouldn’t forget that the indie and niche side of perfumery is a 'growing billion-dollar industry' which gives wearers the illusion of a unique experience. I personally love this idea that I will not smell like anybody else out there but, as the niche becomes more and more popular, that is not longer true which is exactly what happened to Santal by Le Labo and, to a certain extent, Byredo’s own Gypsy Water.

In the end, whatever Byredo had in mind behind their new campaign, it still worked and I definitely connected with it. Even with all my questions and doubts, I am still frantically looking online for a sample of this scent because, even though they prepared me emotionally to blind-buy a full-size bottle, my wallet on the other hand is not so prepared.