We’ve seen some unusual fragrance concepts, but how about a scent “Made for Social Media?” The new unisex fragrance, suggestively named Erox, comes from online community operator Crowdgather (CRWG). The scent incorporates synthetic human pheromones, and, according to the announcement, it has been “proven to increase feelings of arousal, excitement, social warmth and friendliness in both female and male users.”
Crowdgather intends to use online communities and social media to market the fragrance. CrowdGather CEO Sanjay Sabnani hopes the launch of Erox will “showcase how powerful a channel this can be for launching and selling future products.”
There’s little doubt that product buzz can spread via online communities and social networks, though the introduction of a pheromone-based cologne seems a bit of a stretch for a firm running forums that cater to writers and paintball enthusiasts, among others.
The social tie-in does raise the intriguing possibility of an aroma-generating peripheral device for your PC. What if every time you logged into a community, a USB-connected device released a little blast of Erox at you? Even if the pheromone performance claims are bogus, a scent could set a mood or perhaps boost recall of your last experience on the site (see The Brut Effect). And, as a long-time community architect and admin myself, I like the idea of spreading warmth and friendliness – it might cut down on flame wars, trolls, and other bad behavior.
Neuromarketing might be the perfect blog community to run such a test… stay tuned for ordering info! 😉
