The fragrant scent of war

Page after page of perfume ads in the glossies may smell good, but advertisers are distinctly unhappy. Belinda Archer inspects the battle lines

A battle royal threatens to ignite between the usually refined, well-groomed worlds of perfume and glossy women's magazines. Where once there were polite exchanges over the cost of colour page advertisements, or the future availability of the outside back cover, there are now encounters of an altogether more thuggish and ugly variety. Tempers are fraying visibly, and ends of tethers are being reached.

At issue is "clutter", a term which refers to the abundance of advertisements, particularly from the same sector, within any given edition of any magazine. Advertisers don't like it, as they worry their message will be lost among the multitude of similar adverts. As a consequence, they are looking seriously at different ways of spending their advertising budgets.

For clarification, pick up a copy of Vogue or Cosmopolitan or Marie Claire the next time you are near a coffee table. Open at the first spread, then turn the page. Turn again, and again, and once more - the chances are that you will have just been beaten about the head by a relentless stream of commercial messages from numerous perfume and beauty companies.

The practice has been indulged in for years. It is great news for the publication, generating enviably handsome revenues; it seems to be quite popular with the reader, who mostly relishes the uninterrupted glimpse into the soft-focused, sweet-smelling, dream-world of fine fragrances. However, it is evidently a growing problem for the advertisers themselves.

Most of the major perfume houses are now hungrily trawling for alternative vehicles to get their message across. In an industry worth pounds 435m in 1995 and rising, and which sees as many as 100 new entrants annually, getting the message across to the consumer is all-important. Unfortunately, however, it is increasingly hard to be heard in what is a particularly overcrowded marketplace.

"It's a real concern," says an earnest Stephen Gilbert, marketing director of Chanel UK. "Publishers seem to glory in the number of pages they have sold to perfume companies, but they can have too much of a good thing. They are selling their advertising space like a commodity."

Peter Norman, managing director of Parfums Givenchy, adds: "Clutter is an issue. Advertisers are increasingly looking elsewhere. There are now a massive number of ways for me to spend my money and my message to glossy women's magazines is: don't get cocky."

Last November, a traditionally key month for the perfume industry in the busy lead-up to Christmas gift buying, Cosmopolitan carried as many as 27 pages of perfume adverts, while Elle carried 24 and Marie Claire had 22. In addition, the same issue of Cosmo ran five scent-strip adverts, while Marie Claire had seven - around double the amount even the magazines say is really acceptable. Not only is there visual clutter, it seems, there is also smell clutter.

Simon Kippin, publishing director of Cosmo, squarely admits: "I have no restriction on the number of perfume ads I carry."

It is spurious looking at overall pagination of the magazines, too. The three November issues in question were all more than 300 pages long, so to have less than 30 perfume adverts each may not seem that cluttered. The point is that the adverts are mostly banked together near the front of the title.

"There's a feeling of over-commitment," says Gilbert. "No one is just asking the magazines how much the ad will cost - they are also asking where it will go, and they are all being promised right-hand pages, facing editorial, in the first half of the magazine, before a rival product," says Gilbert.

On top of all this, to advertise in the glossy monthlies is far from cheap. For a fragrance house to mount a scent-strip advert in just one edition of Cosmopolitan, for example, it can cost up to a staggering pounds 39,000.

Colour page rates in the top women's monthlies vary from around pounds 12,000 - pounds 14,000, to as much as pounds 20,000 for the outside back cover. There are also hefty premiums of 30 per cent extra for adverts facing the relevant editorial.

Research carried out by Chanel's media buying house, the Media Centre, demonstrates a clear upsurge in spend in other media. It shows that perfume advertising in cinemas, for example, increased thirty-fold in the 12 months to June 1996 on the previous 12 months. Outdoor advertising also grew from 0.4 per cent to 3.9 per cent of total ad spend, while national press went up from 4.9 per cent to 9.5 per cent.

There is further anecdotal evidence. TDI Advertising, the company which sells ads on bus-sides nationally and the London Underground tubes and stations, reports that perfume advertising is a particularly vibrant sector for them. With spending up three times as much now as it was 12 months ago.

"It's a category that has exploded for us," says Brigg Dinley, a TDI account manager. "Not only are perfume companies becoming disillusioned with the women's press, they are realising the benefits of what we can offer, which is a massive ad on the streets that generates high coverage almost at the point of sale."

Norman of Givenchy also points to the "enormous improvement and availability" in posters and outdoor advertising generally, while others cite the attraction and affordability of review sections in the national press, satellite TV, and even new media such as the Internet.

Nigel Conway, head of media planning at The Media Centre, sums up: "You've got to concern yourself with impact when you are sharing the medium with so many rivals. Magazine publishers have to find a solution. In television, you can't have two ads from the same category in the same commercial break. There should be a similar system in magazines."

But Cosmo's Kippin, answers every challenge separately. He argues that while the magazine may carry more than 20 pages of fragrance advertising in any given issue, that does not mean more than 20 separate advertisers - many of the ads are spreads.

"The other point is that we cannot stop the crammed marketplace or the nature of the market, which makes around 60 per cent of its sales in the few weeks before Christmas," he says. "Every medium is cluttered with perfume ads in November and December, not just ours."

Fragrance houses concede that women's monthlies are still necessary to them, despite busily testing out alternative media. They know they have to be seen there: the environment is right, the core target market are in receptive-mode as they leaf through the pages from the comfort of their homes, and, anyway, their rivals are there.

The objections remain, nevertheless, and many are fighting for a workable solution. Gilbert of Chanel suggests that the most simple would be for the magazines to accept fewer perfume adverts. In order to sustain their revenues, he says, they could put their prices up. But the magazines themselves say this is not realistic, claiming that no one, in the event, would pay the increased costs.

Gilbert's retort is simple, however. "Try me," he says. And he is not the only one making the challenge to women's magazines.