Recently people had many attempts of telling geeks and nerds apart. There are quite a few things that give each of them away, but is smell one of them? Well, if it wasn’t by now, it will certainly be from now on, as the nerd xx and nerd xy fragrances have just been launched.
Despite not owning a big perfume collection, I’ve grown fond of these things (not in a metrosexual way, or at least not yet). I read forums where endless threads are dedicated to colognes, I tend to my collection and make sure that each new addition is also present in the online version, and I go sniffing around in the local perfume shops where the offer tends to be rather poor. Niche fragrances are nowhere to be found here and the only way to get my hands on such things would be to order samples from another country or even from another continent. The big question, though, is if I smell like a geek or a nerd. Personally, I don’t think so.
Nerds are more easily recognized by their visual feats. Jodi Battershell from Fragrantica considers that studying too much, watching sci-fi flicks all the time and wear glasses are things that make someone a nerd. Even though I consider myself more of a geek, I do share some nerd characteristics, according to this chart.
nerd xx and nerd xy are two fragrances that have been launched by Good Olfactory Inc. in June. Spokesman Erin Posner stated: “Society often views or portrays nerds as outsiders, excluded from the superficial realms of beauty and coolness, but this is all fantasy and fallacy. In that shallow light, our fragrances are les eaux pour les autres, but in reality, there is broad appeal, because everyone has some other-ness in them. Everyone is a nerd.” I beg to differ, as I know some people who couldn’t have been further from nerds.
To shed some light on the company’s philosophy, Erin Posner declared: “The idea behind our fragrance is that ‘regular people’ wear fragrance, too. Our website is pretty clean because we do not want to distract from the fact that we sell a smell. This ideology is counter to most fragrance marketing, which usually focuses on some superficiality. They use celebrities or other exhausted themes and one-dimensional tropes of sexuality and affluence to appeal to fragrance buyers, but those marketing techniques obscure the fact that the product is a scent.
Our scents are great. The idea behind the scents specifically is that it should smell like perfume and cologne should smell (and not like artificial desire). That is, what do you think perfume/cologne should smell like ideally. This ideology reflects the idea that nerds are what they are. We celebrate that fact and we’ve had a great response so far.
Everyone on our team is definitely a nerd, otherwise we could not pull this off. We’re not trying get nerds into the cool club, we’re not even trying to bring down the cool club, were just suggesting that there a lot of awesome people that don’t fit some of the standards conjured up by the beauty industry.
One other important point, we are aligned with the anti-bullying cause and donate seven percent of our profits in support of that.”
All in all, I see Posner’s speech as a marketing technique. The company wants to attract more customers and that’s totally understandable, but putting everyone in the same basket is not the right thing to do. Nerds and geeks should be distinguished from common people and the two categories should be differentiated properly, too.
Just when I was about to coin the term “eau de nerd,” I noticed that the company’s website bears this name. Anyroad, the ones wanting to find out how nerds smell or how they should smell are free to buy 3.3ml samples costing $6.28 or 3.3 fl. oz. bottles for $31.41. Yes, you got that right, the prices are multiples of pi! Transcontinental shipping would break the deal for me, but if you have the chance, make sure you give them a try.
If you liked this post, please check Scent of the Day: Eau d’Avenger and the Diesel Only the Brave Iron Man Limited Edition.
