This report first appeared in Gulf Marketing Review's April 2009 issue.

Background

The perfume industry is a strong one in the Middle East. According to a Channels Exhibitions press release in November 2008, perfume sales are up 41% and cosmetics 70% in Dubai, 72% and 114% in Qatar, while combined figures for Bahrain show an increase of 48%, Kuwait 28%, Abu Dhabi 19.27% and Oman 13.9%.

Overall, regional duty-free sales are projected to post an annual average growth of 10.3%, compared to 4.6% globally, by 2010, according to a Generation Databank report.

According to a Khaleej Times article in January 2008, competition within the Arabic oud and perfume sector, which is worth Dh11Bn per annum in the GCC, has intensified as a Swiss Arabian announced plans to double its number of outlets in the region to 160 over the coming two years.

“By the end of 2009, we are looking to move towards doubling the number of exclusive showrooms and are already negotiating with all the major malls in the Gulf in order to acquire prime retail space,” said Hussein Adamali, Chairman of Swiss Arabian.

Coverage Performance

We analyzed the media coverage of 12 international perfume brands (129 clippings) throughout January 2009; Dolce & Gabanna, Giorgio Armani, Lancome, Nina Ricci, YSL, Calvin Klein, Givenchy, Hugo Boss, Clinique, Chanel, Davidoff and Estee Lauder.

Each article was analyzed for its AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent), clipping size (size of the entire article), visual size (size of the relevant visual), mention size (size of the relevant mention including any relevant visuals or text), circulation, content (type of article, celebrity association, classification and topic), and its BEI (Brand Efficiency Index), which is a measure of the percentage of visuals, tonality and circulation tiers.

Calvin Klein achieved the highest AVE of $240K which is about 63% higher than the runner up, YSL which achieved an AVE of $147K. Chanel came in 3rd place, followed by Givenchy and Estee Lauder.

Calvin Klein also had the highest amount of coverage with 42 clippings, followed equally by YSL and Chanel, each having 33 clippings in January 2009. Givenchy came next with 18 clippings, followed by Estee Lauder with 17 clippings.

In terms of clipping size, Calvin Klein took the lead once more with 42.88 pages, followed by Chanel with 39.07 pages, YSL with 35.79 pages, Givenchy with 20.73 pages and Estee Lauder with 16.23 pages. Calvin Klein took the lead in terms of visual size as well with 9.68 pages. YSL came in second place with 4.44 pages, followed by Chanel with 2.95 pages, Estee Lauder with 2.5 pages and Davidoff with 2.45 pages. As for the mention size, Calvin Klein achieved 12.18 pages, followed by YSL with 6.5 pages, Davidoff with 5.25 pages, Chanel with 4.52 pages and Estee Lauder with 3.15 pages.

Calvin Klein maintained its lead in terms of impressions with an impressive 2.6M, followed by YSL with 1.6M, Givenchy with 1.2M, Chanel with 1.1M and Davidoff with 0.9M. Important to note here is that despite Chanel having more clippings than Givenchy, it achieved less impressions. The same applies to Davidoff and Estee Lauder.

Despite Davidoff never ranking from the top 3, except for mention size, came in first place in terms of its Brand Efficiency with 5.71, followed by Calvin Klein with 5.69 and Givenchy with 5.53. Hugo Boss, which never ranked from the top 5 in any of the categories, came in 4th place with 5.28, followed by Estee Lauder with 5.20.

Both Calvin Klein and Givenchy achieved the greatest topics variety, while Chanel, Estee Lauder and Nina Ricci only had mentions on their female fragrances. Clinique’s two mentions were not on any of its products, rather on new outlets that will feature its products.

Only 3 brands featured celebrities in their articles in the month of January 2009. Calvin Klein took the lead with 7 articles featuring Eva Mendes, who is their spokesperson for Calvin Klein’s Secret Obsession. Givenchy came next with 6 articles featuring Liv Tyler for Absolutely Irresistible and finally Davidoff with 1 article featuring Ewan McGregor, representing Adventure.

In terms of language penetration, the ratio of Arabic to English varied greatly from one brand to the next. While Calvin Klein, Davidoff, Givenchy and YSL penetrated more Arabic coverage, Chanel, Clinique, Dolce & Gabanna, Estee Lauder, Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss, Lancome and Nina Ricci penetrated more English coverage.

Calvin Klein, Chanel, Davidoff, Estee Lauder and YSL were covered in many markets, while Clinique was only featured in the UAE market. Dolce & Gabanna was only featured in the UAE and Omani markets and Hugo Boss was only featured in the UAE, Qatari and Lebanese markets.

YSL and Calvin Klein were the most diversified in terms of publications’ genres, followed by Giorgio Armani and Givenchy. Once more, Clinique and Hugo Boss performed poorly, as both were only featured in ‘Lifestyle & General Interest’ publications.

As would be expected, most of the coverage for all the fragrance brands was from magazines. Newspaper coverage was minimal for all the brands, with the exception of Clinique, Hugo Boss and Estee Lauder.

Conclusion

Calvin Klein, YSL and Chanel led in most categories. However, the Brand Efficiency Index is a measure of how efficient the coverage was in penetrating powerful mentions, and in that regard it was Davidoff, followed by Calvin Klein and Givenchy that ranked in the top 3.

Interestingly, it was also Davidoff that utilized the most of its total clipping size with 40.5%, followed by Calvin Klein with 28.4% and Estee Lauder with 19.4%. Chanel serves as a good example, as while it had a high clipping size, it achieved a low visual size, low mention size, low impressions, no celebrity association and a relatively low BEI.