Fashion Notebook

Lessons in Branding: How Diesel Fuel For Life Rocketed the Brand to the Top of the Fragrance Market, With Just One Launch

So no doubt you've all seen the ads for Diesel's first foray into
the fragrance category, Fuel For Life, right? (If not, check out these trés sexy photos, at right and below, left). Well, what you probably didn't know is that this one fragrance has shot the Diesel name up to the top of the men's cologne business.

According to figures from NPD Group, the fragrance was the No. 3 overall launch (across men's and women's fragrances) for 2007, despite the fact that Diesel had no history in the category. What's more, through February 2008, the fragrance is solidly within the Top 10 Men's Colognes, ranked by sales.

So how'd they do it? With an ad campaign that didn't only win over consumers, but also won awards, picking up the Fragrance Advertising of the Year via the Fragrance Foundation, in both the men's and women's category. So when we're drooling over the eye candy in both of these shots, it's for a reason. This stuff really IS solid gold.

Wanna hear more? Well, you can ready all about it in our article "Filling It Up With Premium." If you're link-a-phobic, here's a taste:

It's no secret that most every fashion brand wants to break into the fragrance business. And with good reason. While the market is fickle, materials can be found on the cheap, the bottles have a long shelf life and their contents are less prone to the more dramatic trend overhauls that characterize luxury apparel. Because customers will actually pay up to $80 for a little bottle of the stuff, the profit margins smell loveliest of all. But Diesel knew it was facing an uphill battle as an unknown in the space, which was presumably behind its decision to partner with L'Oréal, Paris, for its first foray into the category.

It's also why the introductory support broke many of the traditional rules L'Oréal applies to marketing and launching its ever-expanding portfolio of fragrances. First there was the aforementioned antimarketing viral campaign in the weeks leading up to the August 2007 launch. (Some subsequent print ads announced that the fragrance was "finally legalised.")

Next, when it came to traditional brand advertising (chiefly print and TV), the campaign took a more-is-more approach. Rather than one TV spot, the company created six, via agency FFL Paris. Instead of two, static print ads, one for men and one for women, that feature either a celebrity or single model, FFL created four executions, each of them utilizing a new model to express the individuality of the fragrance. The tag read simply: "Are You Alive?"

"For us, this was an ambitious project," said Ulli Lindauer, vp-marketing of L'Oréal European designer fragrances. "There is a moment captured in the photography that is a universal moment of feeling alive. It was about the brand giving each of us the opportunity to be an individual."

Marketing to Men: How Two Beauty Brands are Reaching the Elusive "Mook" Psychographic

When I saw Knocked Up for the first time on DVD, I kind of fell in love with Seth Rogen. The same thing happened when I watched Jonah Hill’s character saunter through frenetic, sexually frustrated dialog in Superbad (see Rogen pictured, far left, with film's stars, Michael Cera and Hill) earlier this year. These guys reminded me of an old college buddy of mine: a pot-smoking, hard-drinking good times guy whose “Madden 2004” soundtrack used to put me to sleep each night, and with whom I'd spend the weekends swollen with beer, hollering myself hoarse watching NCAA games at a local Irish bar. We'd rag on each other, compare girls we were dating (these were my pre-out days, and now we split down the middle, he'll go for Juno's Ellen Paige while I'll geek out over Cera), and our apartment was the kind of squalor that we've both promised we'll never live in again.

Because, you know, those days are over. But they're not really, and guys well beyond the college years are whooping it up, well, like guys in college.

If you haven't already, check out my most recent feature story, "The Mook Industrial Complex," here.

The term comes from a 2001 Frontline documentary (female counterparts were dubbed "midriffs") and they're the zeitgeist of the 18-34 year old male demo that represents about $1.02 billion in annual household income according to MRI reports.

The problem is, they're highly elusive and, what's more, even though you might think their humor beyond sophomoric, they are wizards at blocking out your marketing messages. Maxim's Rob Gregory told me that these guys receive roughly 3,000 impressions a day (if they live in an urban area, natch) and they block out about 90% of them. So going after the dude-bro is not as easy as slapping a scantily-clad woman on a 30-second commercial for beef jerky, say. But some brands have found a way to get through the clutter, and there's some good advice and strategy talk from the marketing honchos at Mitchum (unit of Revlon) and Axe (unit of Unilever).

Oh, and for extra gross-out factor, check out some of the sites I had to go through for my research: Ebaum's World and College Humor. I can't guarantee that it's work safe, kids, so browse at your own risk.