Sniff strips (in pretty much every fashion magazine) are the obvious answer here. Unlike most products, the actual end-product itself can be shipped inside a magazine. If you like the smell, there's an obvious paid action to take. If you don't, you're at least informed that it's not right for you. Perfume advertising with samples is one of the most direct and pure forms of advertising I can think of: pure information and pure product.

The GP is talking about deodorant, not perfume. The main selling point of deodorant isn't how it smells, but how it makes you not smell. That's not something you can ship as a sniff strip.

Besides of course the obvious issue with the target market of a "manly deodorant" line having almost no overlap with people who read fashion magazines.

You'd have a point if the deodorant in question here was scentless, but it's not. It heavily markets its fragrance, like its ability to supposedly attract hot women.

It's absolutely a deodorant + perfume combo, and primarily the latter from my experience as a niño. Go smell some Axe next time you're in Walmart and see for yourself. Or smell a junior high boy's locker room.

The comment I was responding to here says "perfume", so i was responding to the inquiry as to how one could advertise perfumes.

FWIW, a lot of things are fashion magazines, including GQ, which is mostly read by Gentlemen, as the title implies. There is plenty of space to advertise to Manly Men in magazines, both fashion oriented and not.

Separately, I've yet to see an ad for men's deodorant made in the last, say, 30 years, that emphasized as its primary selling point how it makes you not smell. I'm open to counterexamples, I just can't think of any.

Which makes me wonder, is deodorant something that should be advertised at all?

If your deodorant has some new unique property, etc, then it makes sense to advertise that. And I remember deodorants that did advertise they were careful on the skin, or didn't stain your shirt, were "invisible", longer-lasting, etc.

But if deodorant development has reached a point of stagnation, where no new deodorant tech is being invented and all deodorants are essentially the same, then we're in an interesting economic arrangement.

Macro-economically speaking, is this a company or industry that should keep on growing? The point of capitalism was supposed to be that there was competition in R&D (which brought about progress) and margins (which brought about availability through affordability) and eventually things like the ballpoint pen came to be: ubiquitous products that are extremely cheap and effective at what they do.

You don't see advertisements for the ballpoint pen any more: it's period of R&D and cheapening are long past. The industry is mature, it's done developing and is now producing a steady supply of ballpoint pens for a steady number of employees making a living off of it.

It's just companies today seem addicted to unbound growth and have discovered that R&D and margins aside, they can use advertising to sell more of anything by meddling with emotions.

> You don't see advertisements for the ballpoint pen any more

Google "Ballpoint pen" and you get a whole top row of sponsored links trying to sell ballpoint pens to me.

But sure, ballpoint pens aren't advertised on prime-time TV like products sold to 20-something trying to get an edge on the dating life (deodorant, hairspray etc.). That's an especially lucrative market, but not the target audience of most products.

> Macro-economically speaking, is this a company or industry that should keep on growing? The point of capitalism was supposed to be that there was competition in R&D[...]

One of the main points of capitalism is to decentralize the decision making about what's worthwhile economic activity to a bunch of uncoerced individual decisions.

Does that result in a bunch of money being spent on "pointless" products? Sure, but who's to say what's so important that everyone should do without it?

Look at how websites describe scents:

e.g. https://www.luckyscent.com/product/21631/black-by-comme-des-...

>Notes: Cedarwood, vetiver, leather, liquorice, birch tar, pepperwood, black pepper, incense

This is the information people who are buying perfume (for reasons other than brand image) actually care about. Sure, there's a lot of other marketing text there, but literally none of that information is in perfume ads (without sniff strips).

I don't think people need perfume, thank you. The fact that a perfume manufacturer is "reputable" has more to do with the efforts of their marketing department than it does with any sort of merit.

I think this is such an extreme and oppressive vision of society that it's probably not worth trying to debate it with you.

Oppressive? Did I say we should ban perfume or perfume manufacturers? No. Just because I think they're unethical doesn't mean I think they should be illegal.

Replying to myself because chrisseaton deleted his own post:

Nothing of the sort. I didn't say anybody should be banned from doing any sort of marketing. I merely said that I think people don't need perfume and that the sort of marketing in these industries is unethical.

Convincing people they need something they never knew they needed through psychological manipulation is unethical, period. It happens all over society and it's really too bad. But trying to ban it would create a dystopian society which is arguably worse.

There are more than 2 options for dealing with unethical behaviour, apart from "lock them up and throw away the key" and "let them run amok, doing whatever they want", there is the possibility of rational debate. The vast majority of the time, I choose the third option.

If my (hypothetical, future) daughter wanted to buy a bottle of perfume, I wouldn't forbid her from doing so, I'd talk to her about marketing and beauty standards and so on. I'd try to persuade her that she's a perfectly good person without needing a product like that to augment her.

>If my (hypothetical, future) daughter wanted to buy a bottle of perfume, I wouldn't forbid her from doing so, I'd talk to her about marketing and beauty standards and so on.

Some (most?) of us wear perfume because we like to be enveloped by a pleasant scent - it's for ourselves as much as it's to "impress" others.