The perfume industry is in a period of expansion and diffusion, with new fragrances, a new emphasis on bottle design, and inclusion of a number of celebrity endorsers and "creators" to boost sales and add an aura of glamour to new products. Trends can be discerned in the types of fragrances produced each year which will continue into the future.
Elizabeth Taylor has been very successful with her two lines of perfume and has boosted sales through her television commercials for these products. Television advertising has been an important component in the marketing of fragrances for some time. The commercials deal primarily with image, mystery, and a sense of style of the fragrance. Recently, Elizabeth Taylor has been associated with a perfume called White Diamonds, produced by the Arden company. Associating a fragrance with a celebrity like Elizabeth Taylor is an effective marketing move designed to help the product break through the large number of other fragrances brought out each year. A vice president for the Arden company states: "Bringing Elizabeth Taylor into a store is more than anyone else has to offer during a recession." This is the second fragrance Elizabeth Taylor has lent her name to, after a product called Passion. Her endorsement has been very successful, more so than that of other celebrities with fragrances. She also appears in television commercials and promotional films for the product, including one television spot that has been called "White Fragrance: The Movie" (Duffy, 1991, p. 50).
More and more celebrities are developing their own scents or serving as spokespersons for scents or lending their names to scents. This is a trend that is likely to continue for as long as the ploy is successful and people buy the fragrances because of the association they have with certain stars and personalities, though the trend may dissipate simply because of the large number of celebrities competing with one ano...