Fake Controversy Marketing

A story about a brilliant marketing strategy that created fake controversy to sell perfume.

"I just did a podcast with this guy Craig Clemens. He told the story of one of the greatest headlines he's ever read in marketing. Here's the story: This guy is a famous marketer, known as one of the best marketers on earth. A Hollywood actor hits him up and says, 'My wife wants to launch her own perfume brand, will you come and help us with the marketing of it?'

So he meets the wife, she says she wants to do this, and he says, 'Say no more, I will make this happen.' He starts studying fragrances and goes to a mall where they had a make-your-own fragrance thing. He asks the guy, 'What's the number one fragrance that women love?' The guy says, 'Oh sir, easy - China Musk.' He smells it, it smells good, so he takes it.

But he doesn't go back to the Hollywood wife right away. He sits on it, thinking, 'I need to make her wait to value this, I need to make it feel more important.' After three months, he comes back to her and says, 'I'd like to meet you, I have something for you.' She asks what he's got, and he says, 'I've traveled the world, tested thousands of things, studied, talked to everybody, and I found it - I found the greatest fragrance for you.' She smells the China Musk and says, 'This is perfect.'

In the meantime, he goes to a jeweler and says, 'I need you to make me the fanciest bottle you can come up with for this thing,' like a diamond shape or whatever. So he comes up with this beautiful bottle with the China Musk.

Then he tells her they're going to do a launch. She suggests doing it at a small place, but he says, 'No, no, no, we need to do it somewhere bigger, how about the Crown Plaza Hotel?' She says, 'That's huge, we would need a few thousand people to show up.' He says, 'That's my job.'

She books the hotel and tells him, 'You better not embarrass me.' So he goes home thinking, 'I gotta figure out a way to get thousands of people to come to this grand launch.' He writes this headline that says, 'Wife of famous Hollywood star swears under oath that her new perfume does not contain illegal sexual stimulants.' The subheading says, 'To prove its safety and that it is not what people are claiming, she is doing a live testing where she will prove without a shadow of a doubt that this fragrance works and is safe at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on this date.'

Like 10,000 people show up to this thing. It's packed. He hires armed security guards to walk in with handcuffs to a briefcase that contains perfume, so people see them walking in and think, 'Holy shit, what is this thing that's being presented in this way?' There's this whole story, and it ends up becoming a bestseller.

He broke down the elements: 'Wife of Hollywood star' - curiosity gap, which Hollywood star? 'Swears under oath' - that's the conspiracy, the seriousness, the drama, the stakes of the situation. And 'doesn't contain sexual stimulants' - so people think it's so good it should be illegal."