Ask a stranger nowadays what perfume they are wearing and more often than not the reply will be an indie brand, followed by the statement, ‘Tik Tok made me buy it’. #PerfumeTok, the platform’s dedicated fragrance hashtag, has completely disrupted the category over the past 18 months, giving many niche scents cult-like status. As it stands, #PerfumeTok has garnered 2.3 billion views, while its sister hashtag #FragranceTikTok has 1.1 billion.
As a category that traditionally relies on olfactory receptors to attract consumers into buying, you would think the lack of smell-a-vision would be a real barrier in turning passive watching into active purchasing.
Yet, Gen Z are more than happy to move away from traditional in-store scent discovery and make choices based on video content that decodes the perfume’s notes or explains the mood/feeling it creates.
