Get creative: your fake fragrance ad could earn you some cash

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Leading perfume blog Now Smell This is looking for the most creative, fake fragrance ad in the 2010 edition of its Eau Faux contest.

It is a cliché that often proves to be true that fragrance ad writing is over-the-top and trying too hard to be literary or induce romantic emotions, which is why the blog's editors wanted to reward the most creative writing that manages to play with clichés while remaining original.

All that candidates have to do is write a short paragraph on a fictitious fragrance house and an equally short paragraph on an equally fictitious first perfume of the fragrance house, with no other limitations attached. "The best entries will be funny and pretentious and at least vaguely plausible," the editors said in their announcement February 24.

Entries will be accepted through the end of March, and finalists will be selected by a professional jury at the beginning of April, with the blog's readers getting the last word on who should win. Prizes will be handed out in the form of gift certificates for online shopping site beautyhabit.com.

And if you're in dire need of inspiration, do as participants By Kilian did in 2008's contest: "In three short sentences, they managed to work in Faust, Rimbaud, Macbeth, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Pharell Williams and Baudelaire, and then they opened a fragrance description with the wonderful phrase 'Beneath the pseudoinnocence displayed by Bergamot from Calabria...'"

http://www.nstperfume.com (Now Smell This)
http://www.beautyhabit.com