Brands Briefing: Fragrance brands bet on ‘street scent’ pop-ups to capture holiday buzz

So, for beauty brands like Nest, Scentbird and Bath & Body Works, the big trend this holiday season is creating scented installations in major cities to immerse visitors in their respective holiday scents. Nest has installed a number of decorated trees that mist New York City’s busy shopping hub, Fifth Avenue, with Nest’s signature holiday scent.

Le Berrigaud said that in a noisy marketing landscape, the idea behind these immersive activations is to draw on people’s olfactory memory, in which Nest is associated with a specific place and aroma. Le Berrigaud said this emotional response is why the pairing of the decorated Fifth Avenue setting and Nest’s festive fragrance has quickly become popular with customers. “People remember the smell and where they were on the streets, which creates a lasting memory for the brain,” Le Berrigaud said. For Nest, the scenting tradition has become an opportunity to recreate this experience annually.

There’s also an increasing focus on figuring out ways to connect the dots between in-person events and e-commerce sales. So many of these fragrance brands are also placing a bigger priority this holiday season on making it easier for people to buy a product online after experiencing it in person at one of these pop-ups, or turning to influencer partnerships for promotions.

As just one example, on November 14, subscription fragrance company Scentbird brought Givenchy’s Irresistible fragrance to Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood to celebrate its launch on the service. On the cross streets of Broadway and Franklin, New Yorkers were able to experience Irresistible firsthand, thanks to a team of “Scentbirdies” spritzing the fragrance throughout the day.

The sampling campaign also featured an out-of-home activation with wild postings, sampling touchpoints by brand ambassadors and QR codes to capture online traffic. A similar out-of-home campaign was launched by Rare Beauty earlier this year to celebrate the launch of its first fragrance.

Creating a sensorial experience to stand out

Since 2023, Nest has installed scent misting trees with its holiday fragrance along New York City’s Fifth Avenue to promote its annual limited-edition holiday candles and diffusers. The company is once again partnering with the Fifth Avenue Association on the activation, scenting the Fifth Avenue area between 47th and 59th Streets from Nov. 21 through Jan. 5.

The installation brings the scent’s notes of pomegranate, pine, cloves and cinnamon to the sidewalks for the passersby to smell. Nest is dispersing the seasonal scent via 15 tree displays that feature cold mist aroma diffusers.

This year, the company is going beyond festive-smelling trees, Le Berrigaud said. Nest is adding a new marketing element this season, with a campaign led by a team of New York-based influencers and out-of-home billboards throughout the city. For the point-of-sale aspect, Nest is partnering with Fifth Avenue’s Bergdorf Goodman, which is selling the full limited-edition Nest holiday collection on the seventh floor.

Le Berrigaud said this year Nest wanted to add a digital engagement element to the pop-up by placing QR codes on the installations to drive traffic to the brand’s website. According to Edward Pincar Jr., president of the Fifth Avenue Association, the radius typically sees 23,000 people moving along Fifth Avenue. “For context, that is more than Madison Square Garden,” Pincar Jr. said.

Other new components this year are the displays and product packaging featuring original artwork by artist Donald “Drawberston” Robertson. The partnership also includes life-sized, interactive cutouts of Drawbertson’s signature characters that visitors can take their holiday photos with. 

Le Berrigaud said the company hopes the IRL scent activation and accompanying digital components will help Nest ride out the challenging quarter. “So far, our numbers have been quite positive for the beginning of the season,” Le Berrigaud said. “This partnership with Fifth Avenue Association and Donald Robertson is the peak of our 360-campaign this year.”

A memorable sampling opportunity

Bath & Body Works is another company getting into in-person fragrance activations this season. The brand’s new campaign this month, called Holiday Spirit, features a number of public scenting experiences.

This month, Bath & Body Works set up at Grand Central Station in New York City, giving commuters a preview of its Fresh Balsam as they pass through. According to Bath & Body Works, this is the first scenting experience of its kind at Grand Central Station. 

Additionally, the company distributed its holiday scents in select theaters in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Throughout the season, moviegoers at select theaters in these markets will experience what the brand calls “scentigrations” ads, getting a whiff of Bath & Body Works’s Fresh Balsam scent while watching a 45-second holiday spot.

“Scent is the most powerful sense to evoke nostalgia and joy, and during the holidays, that connection matters more than ever,” Bath & Body Works CMO Jamie Sohosky told Modern Retail. That’s why Bath & Body Works wanted to bring its campaign to places like train stations and movie theaters, where they would likely already be during the holiday season.

Le Berrigaud said sensorial experiences are meant to create a halo effect – and hopefully a viral moment – to bring more people into the brand’s digital fold.

“The intention is to push all this content on social media to bring the buzz and the noise of this campaign to Instagram and TikTok,” he said. “It is also a way to bring a sense of nostalgia and a very positive association with our brand during the holidays.” –Gabriela Barkho

Gummy supplement startup Grüns debuts first-ever experiential takeover in New York City

On the topic of experiential pop-ups, fast-growing gummy supplement startup Grüns celebrated the launch of its limited-edition Grinch Punch flavor on November 15 with a holiday pop-up featuring a crew led by its mascot, Barry. During the marketing stunt – in which the team traveled via sleigh on wheels across Manhattan – the company distributed 14,000 Grinch Punch samples, including 2,000 for kids. 

The day-long pop-up was meant to showcase the two-year-old brand’s playful voice, with the day ending with an influencer dinner. This year, the brand is merging seasonal flavors, cultural collabs and experiential brand moments to bring attention to a category not typically associated with the holidays. According to the company, Grüns’s holiday collaboration with Dr. Seuss Enterprises marks the brand’s first-ever kids product collaboration and its limited-edition holiday product.

The activation comes on the heels of the DTC brand surpassing a $300 million annualized revenue rate. Sam Temmins, brand manager at Grüns, said the company’s experiential strategy revolves around showing people how Grüns can fit into their day effortlessly. In the case of Grüns’s holiday pop-up, “If you were out holiday shopping or wandering through the winter village, you could grab a snack pack [and] snap a photo with our ‘stolen Grinch sleigh,’” Temmins said. –Gabriela Barkho

Why Winx Health is running a contraception promo for Cyber Week

Winx Health, which sells reproductive health products like UTI tests, may not be the “typical” brand to run Cyber Week promotions, its co-founder Jamie Norwood told Modern Retail. However, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, also known as “Blackout Wednesday,” is Winx’s biggest sales day for emergency contraception. Norwood attributes this to an uptick of parties, class reunions and bar crawls around Thanksgiving. 

Winx, formerly known as Stix, wants to make it “as easy as possible” for people to access health products around Thanksgiving, Norwood said. So, this year, it’s offering a Cyber Week promotion through delivery platforms like Gopuff, DoorDash, Instacart and Uber Eats. While Winx has run Black Friday discounts on its own website, this is the first time it’s doing so through other retail partners on delivery platforms, including Walgreens, where Winx is in 6,000 locations. On delivery platforms, Winx is offering $8.50 off Restart, its morning-after pill.

Working with delivery platforms for products like emergency contraception makes sense for Winx, Norwood said, because “when you need this product, you need it immediately.” Partnering with DoorDash and others has also given the company marketing flexibility. “We’re able to do interesting things like sponsored search, bundles and promos,” Norwood said. Winx will still offer 30% off products on its website for Cyber Week.

Winx is now planning an in-app Valentine’s Day promo on DoorDash, including branded display banners. “We haven’t really dabbled in that too much, because we’ve always been relatively tight on our marketing budget,” Norwood said. “But I’m curious to see the lift it has and if we’re able to really increase brand awareness.” –Julia Waldow

What we’re reading

• Williams-Sonoma has sued Quince over sales of dupe products, alleging that the e-commerce company engages in “false advertising.”
• Gap continues to see a boon from its campaign with Katseye earlier this year, revealing during its third-quarter conference call last week that the campaign fueled double-digit sales growth.
• How Gen Z is reshaping holiday marketing.

What we’ve covered

• How Sprouts turned an Apple TV cameo into an e-commerce campaign.
• OpenAI has a new shopping tool within ChatGPT, just in time for Black Friday. 
• Why some brands like Caraa and Petite Plume are pulling back on Black Friday discounts this year.