Smell As Branding

Robert Oliver shares his experience building a successful cologne brand that now generates around a million dollars per month. He discusses the power of scent in marketing, the challenges of product development, and how he leveraged TikTok to grow his fragrance business.

Key Points:

• Fragrance is a powerful but underutilized marketing tool

  • "Smell is actually fascinating... how it makes people feel"
  • It's "the least used sense in marketing" despite its effectiveness
  • Scent can become "a signature of branding" or "a signature of a person"
  • Examples include the distinctive Abercrombie smell, new car smell, and fresh Nike sneakers

• Product development journey

  • Hired a professional "nose" who charged "an arm and a leg"
  • The nose created eight different samples
  • First product was a failure - "did $700 our first month" and "gets murdered with bad reviews"
  • Second product was "very methodical" and became "a winner" doing "a million bucks a month"

• Marketing strategy focused on TikTok

  • Used learnings from first product to develop "the playbook" and "angles that worked"
  • Targeted primarily male TikTok users interested in self-improvement and dating
  • Leveraged the importance of smell in dating contexts - "how do you smell around the girl you're trying to talk to"
  • Named the cologne "Her Loss" (inspired by Drake's album)
  • Used female creators for high-converting content where they called it things like "pussy magnet juice"

• Business model insights

  • Cologne is "super high margin" (essentially "water and a little bit of essential oil")
  • Traditional luxury fragrances like Creed sell for "$250 a bottle"
  • Saw opportunity to disrupt the luxury fragrance space
  • Wanted to transition from consumables to something that could "play in that world" of "fashion culture"