Eau de First Response? Something smells funny here.

What good’s a ghastly event if you can’t find a way to exploit it?

For Demeter Fragrance Library, the Marathon bombings in Boston were just too tempting to ignore. For them, it presented a marketing one-two punch:

• Garner lots of publicity with a completely resistible (from an actual use point of view) but irresistibly wacky (from a garner publicity point of view) product.
• Do good – and trumpet your do-gooding – by donating a big percentage of sales (75%) to a worthy cause, in this case the Boston First Responders Fund, which was set up to help the bombing victims.

Originally, I was thinking it was a marketing trifecta, in that they might also make some money off their new product, but I doubt that was ever the real intent. Easy enough to give away 75% when it really doesn’t matter if you actually ever sell any, given that the prime mover was the exposure.

Anyway, what Demeter did to, ahem, help out, was create a fragrance called First Response – Boston:

… a combination of spices and flowers, overlaid with white smoke and rubber.

The smoke and rubber elements are to honor Boston's Firefighters, who with disregard for their own safety, constantly put themselves in harm's way for the benefit of others.   (Demeter Fragrance Library.)

All praise first responders, of course, but does someone really want to smell like white smoke and rubber?

Boston.com, where I read about First Response, gave it the sniff test:

We gave it a whiff, and smoke dominates the fragrance profile, strong and overpowering of any floral or spice notes. But that could just be us. (Boston.com)

At least there’s no rubber nose…(At least according to boston.com. Reviewers on the Demeter site liked the “strong throw...smoke and rubber prevail'", and “the subtle rubber smell on top of it.”)

Anyway, while I was not at the finish line that day, I can imagine that the real smells were gunpowder, runner sweat, and blood from all those blown off limbs.

But Boston.com asks the real question:

Is this in bad taste? Should a fragrance brand (or any brand for that matter) -- regardless of their good intentions -- create a product that is so literally tied to a tragedy?

Well, here I come down on the side of this being bad taste, as well as on the side that questions whether those intentions were not all that good.

Just brilliantly played: do something in poor taste, but not something so odious that it’ll leave a bad smell around your brand. Plus have the scrim of do-gooding to hide behind if anyone questioned your motives.

Well played, Demeter, well played.

All those newspaper articles, all these bloggers.

Fee, fie, fo, fum… I do believe that, when it comes to a good publicity grab, Demeter Fragrance Library is the address of the sweet smell of success.*

So I just had to go check out the Library, which has in its stacks hundreds of scents to choose from.

These go from the pretty pedestrian ones named for flowers (Lilac), booze (Pina Colada), and fun events (Spring Break) to a bunch that are decidedly more outré.

This list includes a whole raft that I suspect end up as gag gifts based on the name, or as little personal remembrances of things past. (And, yes, there is a Madeleine.)

I could do without Zombie, but among the names that I especially liked are:

Holy Water, Laundromat (dryer sheets? bleach?), Crayon, Paperback,  Clean Windows – does it smell like ammonia?, Condensed Milk,  and Holy Smoke (Catholic Church incense – not to be confused with Incense, which runs more along the lines of patchouli oil-head shop).

Holy Water and Holy Smoke:? Holly Smoke! Are we talkin’ stocking stuffer or are we talking stocking stuffer?

For stocking stuffers given to kinkier thoughts, there’s Riding Crop and Rubber.

For the less than kinky, there’s Rye Bread, Pipe Tobacco and This Is Not A Pipe (which smells like pipe).  And all kinds of choices for those with a sweet tooth: Angel Food, Birthday Cake, Junior Mints, Graham Cracker…

Some of the fragrances are just downright weird: Sawdust, Turpentine, Tarnish, Mushroom, Orange Rim Cleaner (actually not as weird as it sounds), – and Mildew. One reviewer complained that it actually didn’t smell like mildew. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on whether you do or do not want to smell like mildew. Personally, I’m in the latter category.

Lobster is

Not for the faint of heart. Probably our most obtuse fragrance, but it is "dead on" so to speak. Demeter's Lobster is a combination of the sea, sweet meat, and a hint of drawn butter.”

I don’t often wear fragrance, but when I do I prefer it not be obtuse, thank you. And that “dead on” in the quotes? Well, yuck.

Boring me, I just find the idea of Geranium more appealing than have Lobster or Tarnish as my signature scent.

For sheer bizarreness, however, I guess I’d have to give it to Funeral Home.

Funeral Home is a blend of classic white flowers: lilies, carnations, gladiolus, chrysanthemums with stems and leaves, with a hint of mahogany and oriental carpet.”

Shouldn’t’ they be touting its “hushed tones.” And, what, no formaldehyde?

I will note that the designers at Demeter must have a great time. The images that illustrate the fragrances are beautiful and/or witty. For some reason, however, the First Response – Boston line doesn’t have an accompanying image. Perhaps they thought that a pressure cooker might be in poor taste so soon on.

In any case, the scent that I would probably find most evocative – my own private Madeleine, and one that I will not likely get a 50,000 page novel out of – is Play Doh. But, since I wouldn’t actually want to go around smelling like Play Doh, it makes a lot more economic sense to just go to CVS and buy a mini-pack of Play Doh and pop open the lid whenever I want to sniff a bit of my past.

Not that I couldn’t carry it off if I did want to smell like Play Doh. In Demeter’s own words, they’re:

…all about the attitude of the user, not the designer or creator. This is because Demeter's single note scents are inspired by real and familiar objects that are eminently understandable. With Demeter, it is totally discoverable in the name of the fragrance itself. And fragrances inspired by real, everyday objects have other special impacts and characteristics.

That sure holds for Play Doh.

But, when it comes to the Marathon bombings, I part company with anything being “eminently understandable”, or “everyday”. “Special impacts”, I’ll give them that. But couldn’t they have just made a nice donation to the victims, rather than come up with a fragrance commemorating an event that nobody wants to be reminded of?

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*”This is the address of the sweet smell of success” was the tagline of a Boston radio station in the early 1960’s. I’m pretty sure it was WBZ, but if there’s anyone out there who remembers for sure. And apologies if I’ve now lodged the jingle in your brain.