GIFTING: AN INVESTIGATION ON THE ROLE OF PR MARKETING IN CONTEMPORARY PERFUMERY AND OUR BLOG STANCE ON THE TOPIC

September 16, 2021

GIFTING: AN INVESTIGATION ON THE ROLE OF PR MARKETING IN CONTEMPORARY PERFUMERY AND OUR BLOG STANCE ON THE TOPIC

Should we approach gifting and PR culture more critically?

As we were navigating some literature for this post, we ended up listening to beauty blogger-youtuber Samantha Ravndahl, who said something that really made us reflect on the ongoing culture and business strategies of PR gifting. With years of professional experience in the beauty community and industry, Ravndahl transparently sat for one of her youtube videos and clarified to her followers:

" PR is a 100% business transaction. It's not because the brands just really like these influencers and think they're great, and talented and all that kind of stuff... It's part of their marketing budget to send out products so people hopefully post about them, to get a return on sales."

- Samantha Ravndahl

We highly recommend listening to her experience shared on her youtube channel, and her update on her NO PR stance.

What follows then, is a introductory investigation into PR Gifting strategies within the fragrance industry.

In effort to be transparent, our experience with PR gifts is disclosed in the paragraph "Our Personal experience with PR Culture ".

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS PR? WHAT DOES GIFTING MEAN?

Pr gifting is not a marketing phenomenon exclusively related to the advent of social media.

It's been around for decades, and historically was based on relations between a brand and public figures, mostly with celebrities, journalists and editors.

As the marketing changed with the advent of virtual communities and medias, new modes of consumption influence popped out, and so brands became to prioritize new figures for their marketing strategies.

But of course, in order to cover such aspects from a sociological perspective and also ufficialize our stance as a blog, we should clarify what do we mean with those terms.

PR is an abbreviative term for "Public Relations'', a vital part for pretty much every corporate business or company in our contemporary market and society. People working at PR reach out to public figures they think could fit their brand image and promote them. PR does not necessarily include only the gifting side, and also comprehends assisting events and proper marketing transaction in order to create a good image relationship between the public figure and the brand.
Someone working in PR might be responsible for reaching out to those public figures in order to ask them if the brand could send them for free some of their products.

As Ravndahl said way better than we could explain, receiving PR does not happen because a brand wants to be generous and there are no backed expectations: the company's intent is to be featured on the person's platfrom (an article, a TikTok, a video or post) and reach new potential consumers.

You will often find influencers using the term "gift'', but the term is extremely troubling in this context.
The act of gifting in our popular immaginary does not involve transational expectactions, so when influencers receive PR products it is never gifting as understood in a traditional sense (you can find later some more appropriate terms to use, and this is why we will try to avoid using the term and prefer PR product in order to be clear).

Video-essay 'No More Pr' by Samantha Ravndahl

Now, it does happen that influencers, the press, and content creators genuinely love the brand and their offer, but we can see in the next paragraph how it becomes hard to be trustworthy when collaborating with brands, and often in undisclosed ways.

PR is also an essential part of content creation for a lot of influencers.
In the current state of the global market, it enables a more meritocratic distribution of mass-produced goods, and potentially a wider pool of reviews.
Not every content creator starts with the economical stability or accessibility, so PR products can be a way to guarantee the same access to different influencers and content creators.

A lot of influencers/content creators (yet, we need to understand that as soon as any kind of business relationships -and yes PR 'gifting' are also part of this category, both those figures are in reality the same-, no matter if the account tells you they don't feel comfortable with the word "influencer") will say that they are accepting gifts because of how much they love a brand, or even worse the brands are the first to inculcate such narrative on the influencer, when in fact gifting is not at all similar to the usual understanding pre-social media regular consumers had.

Sending a product for free always leads to complicated power dynamics, and often is a cheap form of exploitation for big companies with large distribution, especially when engaging with independent social media creators who likely have no team and legal/bureaucratic support to filter this transaction.
Content creation is a time consuming work, and as any form of work, it should be paid.
While freebies at first are exciting, they soon lead to some problematic forms of consumerism , and contemporary marketing-accepted sneaky ways of getting publicity and content for free, with undisclosed behind the scenes relations between the brand-PR company-influencer/content creator-agencies.

We will discuss in more details the different barriers of the PR gifting culture in the next paragraph.

''Fashion blogging and “influencing” was born in a time where buying fast fashion was the norm and no one thought twice about it. [...] Constantly seeing all these new clothes and deals only encourages unnecessary purchases. This constant promotion of new clothing likely happens because influencers are trying to earn an income through sponsorships and affiliate links, and I can understand that people need to make money. I don’t think that these constant messages of consumption are healthy though, and I wish more influencers were talked more about the environmental and ethical issues surrounding fashion.''
- Imperfect Idealist

A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE : THE EFFECTS OF PR CULTURE ON WESTERN SOCIETY, FROM INFLUENCER TO CONSUMERS

As mentioned previously, corporate and autonomous brands with large distribution pretty much always have a budget for PR, and might deal with it directly or delegate the job to a PR firm. Common marketing knowledge wants brands to economically insist on PR as it should return the investment in bigger profit gains.

This logic should theoretically benefit both the brand and influencer, and occasionally the consumer with some discount codes or offers.

As we are facing an oversaturated market of brands in any branche - yes, perfumery too - PR marketing strategies reached new troubling forms, like exploitation, and controversial marketing narratives based on consumer guilt, also in regards to themes which the corporate world already managed to wash out of their hands, such as inclusivity and sustainability.
A few examples I could think of, are:

• SUSTAINABILITY : a lot of articles covered the recent trend of influencers ‘decluttering’ their wardrobe, mostly composed by gifted items.
A lot of people are starting to notice the waste this type of marketing creates, and so do some influencers.

Going back to the experience of Ravndahl, she exposes one haircare - fragrance brand talking about how the fragrance comes inside at least three packages and tons of materials to guarantee the product integrity.
Ravndahl also opens up about how she used to receive around 10-20 packages during a "quiet" week.
In The Frow talks about how a lot of brands do not even 'tailor' the free products and send them massively to the creators.
According to Meagan Faye on Medium, around a 90% of the products influencers receive will never be used.
Usually influencers will resell those products, and as we can see on virtual portals like Reddit, this creates general outrage and anger unfortunately more towards the influencer than the company ( two threads on the topic: Selling PR? and Thoughts on Influencers who sell their PR?).

Gifting is occasionally used to declutter brands' repository too: if a product was produced in large quantities and did not sell well, certain brands authorize to gift the product to the influencer. This can look helpful to avoid waste, and in part it is true, but the laying problem is about the quantities and manufacturing excess / following environmental repercussions the brand produced in primis.

Another important aspect to highlight is the incongruent marketing narration promoted to consumers: eco-wrapping, recycling and upcycling, etc... While they are partially an undoubtful important advancement for the industrial production and creation of olfactory products, what is often not taken in accountancy is how these advancements have enabled new marketing terroristic strategies on consumers based on creating feelings of guilt, shame, and accountancy on the final consumer. ''You should feel bad for using natural resources - hence, for all your wasteful consumption we impose on you through detailed marketing research, we will attempt to make you believe that planting a tree, donating 5cents for each 300$ sold perfume, will save the planet. And the only way to be mindful of climate change and exploitation is only by purchasing our goods.''

• CONSUMERISM: Watching massive hauls is alienating everyone, content creators included.
Decluttering and anti-hauls videos have seen the rise on youtube and other virtual portals, but also raised the question among followers and consumers: was the product really worth the investment? It's a never-ending vicious circle the neoliberal market created, where we need to perform and consume in order to belong.

• RELIABILITY: how relatable is an account being gifted a luxury product or experience?
If we consider the growing demographic of most fragrance/skincare influencers (teens and early 20s), most of the PR products will be out of budget for the so-called followers.
This also raises the question: is it really that profitable for brands to send PR? Quoting another video of Samantha Ravdhal, she's the first to mention how a growing number of brands are starting to notice no economic return from such strategies.

• MERITOCRACY: meritocracy is a dangerous neoliberal social myth created to falsify privilege with the fairytale formula "if you work hard enough, you can achieve it too".
In the era of social media, this social myth is even more evident: from the possibility to buy numbers of followers, exclusive networking possibilities, to the twisted mechanism of algorithms.
PR products and the misuse of the term "gift" in relation to PR is an integral part of the meritocratic narration, but it is rarely based from the brand side as a sincere thankful postnote or appreciation for the influencer.
For this reason, the term "gift" in the context of social media and marketing has been often discussed and proposed to replace with terms like 'affiliate' or simply 'PR'.
Additionally, pr gifting can promote the idea of 'entitlement': what makes an influencer more entitled to receive freebies than an actual client?
The youtuber Purvi Upreti highlighted how fragrance community is mostly based on marketing exploiting the various issues of internet-based communities, such as through the simps a content creator/public figure often (and unintentionally) generates.

• POWER DYNAMICS : while a PR product differs legally from paid advertising, the social media era created - and normalized- new forms of exploitation.
Brands sending products in exchange of unpaid publicity is a worlwide accepted reality, and most of all gifting creates often unclear and twisted power dynamics between the content creator and the brand (and let's not forget the real consumer).
Creators in order to remain on the brands PR lists feel pressured to highlight or review positively the gifted PR.
If something undisclosed happens behind the scene between the brand and influencers, the latter often starts to boycott, stop featuring or start crusades against certain brands.
This often comes to the expenses of the consumer / follower for not being aware of the current relations between the brand and influencer.
Blackmails are also a common tool to maintain relationships from both sides against each other ("you didn't send me the latest product so I won't feature you" etc).

"Consumers end up putting faith in these brands because they feel as soon as the brand releases like a shread of honesty, they preceive it as true, genuine, honest and wanting to connect with the consumer rather than marketable honesty. Don't ever take anything in business as someone just being nice, someone just doing the right thing...Where money lives, that's not the reality. [...] Consumers are putting their faith into brands and influencers when they shouldn't be.[...] (consumers) feel like watching a friend, it's awesome but there's so much issues with that. [...] A friend is never going to put you in a position that could potentionally put you in a bad position, cause to lose money or misleade you''

- Samantha Ravndahl

Are there some alternatives to improve product placement and safeguard both the content creator and consumer?

''As influencers, I believe we have a responsibility to our audience and to our planet to make small changes that can have a positive effect on our society[...]
I simply think we can and should make an effort to be better.
Whether that is accepting fewer packages, choosing to recycle more or donating on a regular basis.
There are so many people out there who could use some of the gifts were given.''

- Meagan Faye for Mediumm

Influencer or content creators might also improve certain aspects:

◦ Disclosing the agreements with the brand to their audiences should always be included. From the typology of the product to the requirements from the brand in exchange of the freebies for the content creators.

◦ Instead of reselling the gifted products, giveaways for the influencer's community, fragrance swaps, or donating to charities are more honest and useful practices.

◦ Content creating is a work. Unless you decide to stay away from sponsorships and PR, it is work, even if unfortunately not always well retributed. Always require to be paid. Producing content is time consuming and you should always receive something back for your time invested in researching, editing etc.

◦ Ask for smaller sizes. Fragrance samples, 5 - 10ml travel sizes, are enough to review a product. Full sizes can be important on certain aspects (design, practicality etc.), but keep in mind the type of demographic you have and please remember blind buying fragrances is not a practice we all should encourage. It's unethical and not responsible to tell vulnerable people to invest blindly disgusting amount of money on some luxury smelly water when samples exists. Samples are less wasteful and more relatable for the real consumer (aka the followers)

◦ Which leads us to: create an open resource for the public to know about the dynamics and expectations behind the PR products received. For some useful information, please consult the Perfumery Code of Ethics by Christophe Laudamiel.

Borrowing from the book and travel blog 'What's Hot?', where you can find additionally a more detailed and well thought guide on why Influencers should stop using the term "Gifted", Laura proposes the following terms which avoid any type of vagueness:

◦ PR Product
◦ Affiliate
◦ Review Product

◦ AD

( yes, theoretically PR 'gifts' are not sponsorships, but as the article by Laura explains better than we did, those 'gifts' are also taxable and require something in exchange, that is why AD in such cases is also a valid option )

OUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH PR CULTURE

REGGIE: Fragrances have always been a secret family affair in my upbringing.
I spent amounts on fragrances of which no human should be proud of , and have some family members who are investors and regular clients for some maisons (yes, you get it- I'm that spoiled posh brat everyone hates, *rightfully* ).
To me, it was always interesting observing how & why the people around me were investing so much in luxury, yet never received a significant gifted product or experience. From what I've understood, VIC ( very important clients ) is relatively new, but I'd say that from what I've observed when it comes to British upper-class consumerism, influencer PR strategy have not been received positively. Is it due to the environment's elitist reactionism? Highly probable.
But I think PR's recent evolution made more obvious how the prices charged by big maisons are in a good 70% pure marketing.
Becoming more conscious because of social media about brands who heavily rely on PR , actually made more aware financially and definitely mindful about the brands I want to support and buy their products in full retail prices.

DIDI: I started receiving products for free from brands when I was a teen because I was working in the field (I'm very open on the topic and previously spoke about my past in the raw materials farming/manufacturing/selling field).

For over two years I used to get a lot of 100ml bottles made by the niche Italian brands supplied by the company I worked for. That was the norm for most people working in the field and having relations with brands.

It felt great, at first. I was packing my school bag with the new gifted items and proudly exposing them to my school mates. I was so envied and I can't lie how distinguished I felt.

Then I realized I didn’t use any of those products.
I always felt like doing something bad when decluttering them.
I realized that of all the products I used to receive, I never bought one again.

While I no longer work in the field, I still have some strong friendships and relations with people working in the industry- for example, my flatmate and very close friend works in PR for the fragrance industry, and I did make some extra money during the summer 2022 assisting her company.
I also think it's fair to share the insights I heard from some friends who are owners and perfumers.
I want to focus on two points that came out from our chat.
The first is that often brands ask or attempt indirectly to make influencers understand that they would like them to not propose dupes of their products.
Some indie perfumers as friends have noticed that PR culture often reinforced the growing dupe and clones market, and it has also started to also affect small, independent companies.

The second point is in fact profit: they all agreed that PR culture in recent social media discourses has been often resisted by consumers, and affected its traditional marketing power (but I guess that this mostly relates to small businesses).
Often the online virality of products originate from non-orchestrated operations, and consumers have developed a skillful eye for ''organic discourse'' in relation to goods and luxury consumptions.

Since we started this blog, a few companies reached out to us.
It took us months to decide what to do, as we weren't against it, initially.
Then our blog has naturally switched to a completely different direction from what it was conceived as, at first, and as I am also approaching scent and multisensorial studies in my academia training and work, I realized we have nothing to do with PR industry. I have friends as mentioned previously that work in different branches of perfumery, and often ask for fun to evaluate some of their projects. I have some of their unfinished compositions at home, but stopped accepting their final products for free.

FULL DISCLOSURE 5.10.2022 In the summer of 2022, I took a break from academia to have some savings, and assisted my flatmate in PR for the company she works for in the fragrance/cosmetic field. Luckily now back in my lane, the experience was definitely formative, and while it did reinforce a lot of my stances on the topic, especially in relation to the exploitation of content creators, and the extremely wasteful practices that dishonestly than shame consumers with marketing narratives around sustainability, it and actually made me more aware of the problematic aspects of this side of the industry.

CONCLUSIONS & OUR BLOG STANCES

ON PR/RECEIVING PR:

We are not saying anything revolutionary in concluding that brands need to rethink more critically their marketing strategies.

With perfumery becoming mainstream and so profitable, a lot of the content on the topic has become driven exclusively by PR intents.
There is an oversaturation with the marketing and all its branches.

Finally, this is just to make sure it is clear both on our blog and on this social media, we do not accept gifted products / PR.
While this is a personal decision, we understand PR can give access to content production for influencers / public figures.
Refusing PR does not make us more ''intellectually enlightened'' or ''morally superior'' .
We enjoy the amateurial nature of our blog, and want to maintain it.
Our blog remains a passion-driven, part-time hobby which allow us to excercise our critical thinking, but more importantly engage and learn from the various perspective engaged with olfactory consumptions. We often are in the wrong, and by being not invovled with the industrial operations of the fragrance market, it is impossible for us to offer an objective overview and critique of its current practices.

As a blog we hope to open a collective reflection on gifting/PR culture and its space in 2022, and maybe think together of new, more effective strategies which do not necessarily exclude or create biased power dynamics.