82 Luxuries Lesson D 83

D GOAL 4 EVALUATE THE WAY ADVERTISInG CREATES DESIRE FOR PRODUCTS

Reading

Goal 4 Evaluate the way advertising creates desire for products

Choose a luxury item and talk with a partner about the way it is marketed. What forms of advertising are used? How do the advertisers convince people to buy something they dont really need?

producing roses, jasmine, and lavender for centuries. Muls rose absolute, a liquid extracted from rose petals, sells for $3650 a pound. Explains Mul, Picking roses will never be done by machine. The rose petals are carefully harvested by hand during the early morning. By ten oclock, the heat of the sun begins to wilt the flowers, and the workers are done for the day. Labor is 60 percent of the cost, says Mul.

The high cost of natural ingredients is just one of the reasons that perfumers today also use artificial ingredients in their fragrances. Synthetics also allow perfumers to use scents such as lilac that cannot be obtained naturally, or scents from flowers that are too rare to be picked. Synthetics save wild animals from being used for their musk as well. According to perfumer Harry Fremont, Good fragrance is a balance between naturals and synthetics.

Once perfumers have created a lovely fragrance, its time for the marketing department to work its magic. The industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to convince people to buy something they dont really need. The success rate for new perfumes is lowonly about one in ten is successful, so spending money on advertising is a big gamble. Its also the only way to let the world know about a fragrance so beautiful that a man will miss the woman who wears it when she leaves the room, a perfume so enchanting that it can make us believe our dreams will come true.

Writing

Grasse, France

A. Discuss these questions with a partner.

1. Have you ever bought perfume or cologne? What brand did you buy?

2. Why do people wear perfume or cologne?

3. What do ads for perfume or cologne usually show?

B. Write answers to the questions.

1. What are the two main ingredients in perfume? ______________________

2. Why do perfume makers use fixatives? _______________________________

3. Which French city is famous for its flower farms? _________________________

4. What are the four advantages of synthetics? _______________________________

5. What percentage of new perfumes succeed? _______________________

C. Make a list of other products designed to make people feel better about themselves. Share your list with the class and talk about whether the products really do what theyre supposed to do.

Perfume: The Essence of Illusion

A. Create a magazine ad for a new perfume for men or for women. You will need to:

Givetheperfumeaname. Drawasimplepictureorcutoutmagazine

photographs to illustrate your ad. Writeafewsentencesabouttheperfume.

B. When youre finished, present your ad to the class.

Perfume, says Sophia Grojsman of International Flavors & Fragrances, is a promise in a bottle. We want to believe. We want to be prettier, richer, sexier, and happier than we are. Consider the labels on the fragrances we buy: Joy, Dolce Vita, Pleasures, White Diamonds, Beautiful. Said Charles Revson, founder of the Revlon cosmetics company, We sell hope.

In terms of chemistry, fragrances are a mixture of aromatic oils and alcohol. Perfume has a concentration of oils greater than 22 percent. Eau de parfum has a 15 to 22 percent concentration. The less aromatic eau de toilette has 8 to 15 percent oils, and cologne contains less than 5 percent oils. The fixatives, or oils that make a fragrance last a long time, traditionally came from animals. Those have mostly been replaced by synthetic chemicals. The other ingredients came from plants, most notably flowers.

The area around Grasse, France, is renowned for its flower plantations. Farmers like Joseph Mul have been

Word Focus

synthetic = artificial, man-maderenowned = famouswilt = If a flower wilts, it gradually turns soft and brown because it needs water or is dying.musk = a substance with a strong smell that is used in making perfumegamble = risk

This man is standing outside the Sephora perfume superstore in Paris.

For me perfume is an indulgence, says Angie Battaglia, an Austin, Texas, businesswoman who owns 30 scents.

A woman picks night-blooming jasmine flowers at dawn in a field in India.

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