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On October 6, Merit purged its Instagram feed — its largest social channel, with 548,000 followers — wiping it entirely clean. It was a move that Aila Morin, its CMO, called “certifiably insane.” It was designed to bring focus to Retrospect, its first perfume, which launched 16 days later.
But perhaps it made sense, as the whole campaign — which focused more on print ads than TikTok — centered on doing things differently than the brand’s competitors. “We bought the back page of The New York Times, and we did scent strip ads in Vogue,” Morin said, noting that such advertising formed some of her own earliest scent memories. Before the fragrance even launched, the brand had seeded 15,000 samples to its DTC customers.
Merit tapped five female photographers to shoot the campaign, which also ran on billboards in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London. And it worked with the indie publication The Gentlewoman to create an entire book inspired by the scent’s development — the book is selling on its e-commerce site for $52. “Often in marketing, you’re pushed to tell the most simplified story you can,” Morin said. “[But] I actually think consumers are very interested in the more complex intellectual story. … We don’t give people enough credit.”
The fact that Merit made a perfume at all was a move based on instinct, not business, Morin said, noting that Retrospect took three years and 252 tries to perfect. The brand first surveyed its customers about fragrance in the fall of 2022, after already starting to work on one. It found they wanted the brand to develop something in the category, though they were split on the type of scents they were most interested in: Responses were weighted 20-25% each for oud, fresh and floral. The key notes in Retrospect include bergamot, jasmine, musk and pear.
Morin timed the fragrance launch to be after the August debut of the brand’s second skin-care product: the Great Skin Priming Moisturizer — its Great Skin Serum is the No. 1 serum in the anti-aging category at Sephora, according to Morin. Placing the launch after the moisturizer made it a safe financial bet for the company, though risking entry into the new category paid off. On its launch day, a bottle of Retrospect sold every 30 seconds.
