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Perfume Ads in Magazines - A Strange Whiff Of American Culture

Once upon a time, perfume was reserved for department stores or boutiques, and not magazines. But about 100 years ago, an enterprising publisher figured out a way to insert or imbibe perfume into pages of a magazine, and the smell factor arrived in the magazine world. One publisher of a regional gazette that was distributed to rural residents – mostly farmers – decided to spice up his springtime planting issue with a whiff on wild onion, and he added the essence of the onion to his ink. The newspaper was then printed using onion ink, and it had a strong and pungent odor. Back in those days, rural subscribers always got their magazines through the mail, because they did not often go to grocery stores, bookstores, or other places where magazines might be sold. But they sometimes did not get to the post office on a regular basis, either, and those who got their mail at a post office box might let it sit there for a week or two before they went to get it.

This caused many rural post offices to smell bad, as this particular gazette sat there sweltering in the boxes of small country post offices. Eventually the Post Master General of the USA sent a stern warning to the publisher that he must cease printing with onion scented ink, or be severely fined by the federal government.

But most of our experience with scented magazines goes in the other direction, and involves picking up magazines that smell like exotic and expensive perfumes from France or other fashion conscious cities. The rock star Neil Young was once asked if he read Rolling Stone Magazine, which is the quintessential publication for rockers and musical entertainment. He commented that he quit reading it back when it started smelling like perfume – a statement on the evolution of the glamour rock industry as well as a commentary of the fact that many magazines have changed their premise or sold out, to sell ads.

But if consumers buy magazines with perfume inserts, and then go out and buy the perfume, that is a huge boon for stores selling perfume and other related items. So the concept of making reading an olfactory experience may turn out to be one of the cleverest marketing schemes in modern times. And the combination of ink and perfume is not likely to go away anytime soon, but may instead find us smelling coffee, air fresheners, or other scent-related consumer goods in the future.

by Jeff Lakie

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