Coty's Calvin Klein stable is set to be the first company to launch a fragrance in cyber space with its latest fragrance duo ckIN2U.
The new fragrance line, ckIN2U is billed as the ck one for Generation Y. As Liz Garrett, md Coty Prestige UK explains: “We want today's young audience to be as excited about the ck franchise as their equivalents in Generation X were in 1994, when we launched ck one. We are launching the fragrance in a virtual world to represent the interface between virtual and reality that is so relevant to today's youth culture. The ck brand is all about capturing the moment and zeitgeist of a particular era.”
The fragrance will be available through the online community Second Life, an alternative, web-based world where members can create an alternative personality and life for themselves and, more importantly for the business world, spend cyber currency - or Linden dollars - to purchase accessories. In the last 24 hours alone the Linden community has spent US$1.54m on their online personas.
“Each ck fragrance has been of the moment, a response to the times we live in, and that's why they've been so successful,” says Lori Singer, vp global marketing, Calvin Klein. “ck one was definitive of Genration X. Relaxed and casual, universal and unisex, it was all about group and grunge. Then came ck be, more intense and focusing on connecting with one's own self. And now ck IN2U is about finding new ways to connect with someone else. It reflects the idea of connection without commitment - an integral part of the millennial generation.”
Generation Y are unique, says Garrett, because they are the first generation to have never lived without technology. They are the sons and daughters of baby boomers and they do not know life without the Internet. Through multi tasking, the average member of Generation Y manages to squeeze 43 hours into every day. Many have friends that they have never met.
ck IN2U is the first non-unisex fragrance for the ck brand because, as Garrett attests, trends are now more gender specific; men have become more masculine and women have become more feminine. The women's scent is a fresh floral with notes of pink grapefruit fizz, Sicilian bergamot and red currant leaves at the top, middle notes of sugar orchid and white cactus drying down to a base of neon amber, vanilla soufflé and red cedar. ck IN2U for him, meanwhile, opens with lime gin fizz, pomelo leaves and frosted tangelo, followed by a heart composed of cocoa, pimento and shiso leaves with cool musks, white cedar and ultra-vetiver at the dry-down.
The company is so confident that the fragrance duo is to become the voice of this generation that it has even trademarked the term technosexual. And given that the brand sold 20 bottles of ck one every minute following its launch in 1994, they may well have good reason.
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