Contrarian Influencer (ROUND 2)
Let’s workshop this piece about how sophisticated consumers might be just as manipulable as mainstream audiences, perhaps even more so because of their belief in their own discernment.
scent of the day: Lao Oud, by Bortnikoff.—Easily one of my top-five fragrances (and would be my untouchable number one—unmatched in its introspective sensuality—if the pickled poop fermentation did not recede, turning into a politeness of smokey musk powder, after the first hour), Lao Oud—one of the best flankers since Bel Ami Vetiver, if we consider it a flanker of Oud Monarch (a big “if”)—masterful blends lactonic florals (earthy-lemon magnolia, banana-coconut frangiapani, perhaps petrol-talcum violet) with barnyard blue cheese (rosey Laotian agarwood, clovey Indian agarwood, both boosted by medicinal crocodile wood)—these two elements snuggled, almost too well for someone like me (who likes the crude imperfections of TSVGA staccato), in a balsamic envelop of smoked leather (birch tar, guaiac wood) and civet-shot espresso (perhaps kopi luwak coffee) spiked with banana-rum syrup and dusted with bitter cocao and Christmas-candle spices (vanilla, cinnamon, clove, licorice).
Contrarian Influencer
Imagine a perfume house ravenous to maximize its metastatic reach. Superficial populations, of course, are already in the bag—their critical faculties chloroformed by glowing reviews from YouTube influencers bought with free bottles. But what about those potential buyers who want art-driven as opposed to profit-driven fragrances? What about those self-mythologized aesthetes—too discerning to be counted among the sheeple—who fancy themselves connoisseurs immune even to the most twerkific marketing ploys? How might this house, this olfactory pocket predator, sway these above-it-all loathers of the aquatic freshie (Acqua di Bah) and the reptile-brain commercialism for which it stands in every Ulta and Sephora?
One strategy, already in play for all we know, banks hard into dystopia—insidious enough to have been hatched in the cigarettes-for-feminists dreams of Edward Bernays or in the cereal-for-nonmasturbating-children dreams of John Kellog. The house could plant a sleeper agent in the guise of a contrarian influencer. His main job, however much tucked behind the legerdemain of disinterested chronicler of the perfume tradition, will be to trash the current offerings of the house (and its competitors too) for being “soulless cash grabs” and to trash the house itself (and its competitors too) for being “pathetic purveyors of corporate sewage that the world doesn’t need any more of.” Genuflection at the feet of vintage bottles will balance out, like banana frangipani might barnyard oud, the critical content. “The vintages,” he will repeatedly clarify, “not their neutered reformulations”—this way his praise, being for corpses next to impossible to acquire, will not threaten current market share. And if only to cover his tracks (in particular, to demonstrate his up-to-date credibility and to break up the monotony of his condemnation for newer stuff so that his audience has at least tentative reason to harbor hope for the future), he will on occasion applaud certain artisanal houses. But even here he will make sure to weave in condemnation of the provoke-no-challenge approach of every mass-market designer (including the house pulling his string like Palpatine): “too concerned with the bottom line,” so he puts it, “ever to risk the burning-tire accords of Andy Tauer or the barnyard oud of Bortnikoff or the pissy animalics of real-civet vintages like YSL’s Kouros before the days of IFRA overreach.”
The cost of such eviscerations, no matter how ruthless, is negligible. Those with artisanal-niche sensibilities, after all, were not going to buy the current line anyway. The potential benefit, on the other hand, his tremendous. However counterintuitive the strategy might seem to myopic eyes (a strategy reminiscent of computer chess engines like Deep Blue or AlphaZero sacrificing even queens and bishops for downstream positional advantage), the payoff comes into relief—like twilight stars—with a patient look into the distance. Whether hired from the start to play the long game of building credibility among the uppity crowd or simply manipulated in such a way not to realize he operates exactly how the company wants him to do (perhaps, for instance, the house years later flatters him, with the help of a big check or behind the scenes consultation employment, for “tough criticisms that we have taken to heart and have tried to rectify”)—whatever the case, after rounds of passionate mockery the YouTuber (switched on, fully operational) will suddenly pivot.
The house’s newest releases, so the trojan horse will say, break the mold of commercial vapidity. “To put this in context, yesterday I wore the original Caron Tabac Blond. What I have on right now is just as well blended as that masterpiece from over a hundred years ago! And the thing is, they could’ve gotten away with sheit blending. The ingredients—” he nosedives into his arm. “God, they’re just that fucking good. Excuse my language, but I gotta say it.” His eyes close again, rapture manufactured. “I’d almost swear they used real oakmoss (I’m talking Mitsouko tier)—even real deer musk or hyrax.” He might nosedive again for some hypnotic moments of appreciative silence. “Oh man, now in the dry down I’m getting the sea, like deep ocean—briny, umami, seaweed ocean. Choya loban, choya nakh—you know? Even if the musk is synthetic (which it could very well be: this is just a first impression)—even if it is, the ambergris in here isn’t just some calone-ambroxan accord. No, this’s the real deal. I mean look at this.” He holds up a bottle. “This is Areej le Doré’s Atlantic Ambergris II. The ambergris on my arm right now blows the Areej Le Doré away. I mean—away. Ambergris has gotten prohibitively expensive. I really don’t see how they’re managing to do this at this price point. I expect this thing to shoot up. Get a backup bottle now is my advice.” Although this might be pushing it (especially if the house did not make sure to have included certain niche elements at least at recessive enough levels so as not to offend mediocre sensibilities), he might even go so far as to say—in what would be a brilliant stroke—“And you know what? Maybe I was too harsh on the earlier work. I mean, this pure art in a bottle. It can’t just becoming from nowhere.”
His on-screen change of tune, his bowled-over expressions at the house’s prodigal-son turn, will move the resistant population—street cred earned through years of shared disdain—to start buying. That is the idea. Even just a sliver of their wallets would be a victory. Consider how susceptible smell is to marketing (as we get one of the purest examples of in the Orto Parisi line of comparatively mediocre offerings boosted by the over-the-top narrative). Consider as well how much heady creatures like us, evermore alienated from direct experience in our neurotic state of aloneness, prefer hyperreality’s talk about sensation over reality’s direct sensation. In this case, the stratagem—even if the house alters not one thing about their amber-woods cheapo style (adding not even a drop of TSVGA-reminiscent skunk cabbage or goat hair tincture) is not as far-fetched as less cynical minds might imagine.
