Case Studies
Le Cherche Midi
Brand strategy, Website design, Video shoot, Video editing, Photo shoot
Scents and Sensibility
Le Cherche Midi is a luxury artisanal fragrance company located in New York City. All of their fragrances are hand-crafted and created by notable French perfumers and each fragrance is numbered and given a color instead of a name. The idea behind this is to allow the person smelling the fragrance to form their own interpretation and experience their individual “found moment.”
Just before the summer Nathan Motylinski approached us to help develop an online strategy for the brand. As dab hands at e-commerce websites we wanted to take the Le Cherche Midi brand and buying experience to new heights.
The Website
Working on the Le Cherche Midi website had a few challenges. While technically the Le Cherche Midi website is an E-commerce project, we needed to break out of the barriers of the typical E-commerce organizational flow.
“Typically you have categories which leads to individual product pages. LCM instead promotes each product by “Scent” which is associated with a number. Each scent page is unique in the fact that it abides by its own color scheme, imagery and online videos, unique from the rest of the scent pages. Once we sorted through the customization of each scent page, that gave us a really good idea for the design flow for the rest of the site.”
— Robbie Edwards, Web Developer
We felt that by introducing imagery that related to the scent, and videos explaining the thinking behind the scent it would help to encourage potential consumers make a much more informed decision about the fragrance and therefore they’d be much more confident about investing in a Le Cherche Midi fragrance item.
“Nathan was very clear about sticking to the company philosophy of not dictating to the consumer what the scent was. However, we felt that the existing Le Cherche Midi website had no romance associated with the scents at all. Let’s be honest here, scents aren’t an easy sell. It’s subjective; one person’s scent heaven is another’s olfactory hell.”
—Sam Edwards, Creative Director
Perfumer Cecile Hua and SKAGGS Creative Director Sam Edwards discuss scent development early in the project.
The color sets and numbers were still an important part of the Le Cherche Midi site, so they were emphasized and served as a way for users to “jump right in” to the fragrance they were most intrigued by. The front page for LCM features a prominent grid promoting each fragrance scent. There is a lot going on on this page, starting with the big rollover actions for each scent and a little banner at the top of the page which displays specific information depending on which scent number you are hovering over.
“We had to be careful with this setup as to not actually annoy the visitor with a multitude of flashing color and imagery, and at the same time convey a little bit of each scent, enough to catch their attention and make them want to click through.”
— Robbie Edwards, Web Developer
The Video Shoot + Post-Production
Bradley, Sam and Nicole worked hard on the video creation and editing of all of the scent videos.
“We felt that video was a natural step forward for Le Cherche Midi, it helped to put a human side to the brand. Perfumer Cecile Hua’s fascinating fragrance descriptions really helped to emphasize the concepts behind the scents.”
—Bradley Skaggs, Creative Director
Behind the scenes on the video shoot at our Brooklyn studio.
Perfumer Cecile Hua on the set of the video shoot—talking scents.
Shooting on location in SoHo House was challenging. We felt that a quieter setting was more appropriate because of the dialogue, so we scouted a location in Brooklyn where Cecile could talk about the products in context.
“Cecile knows so much about fragrances but she was nervous about speaking on camera. Once the cameras got rolling though, she was a natural! The information comes across really well on film because of her expertise. Once filming wrapped and we went into post-production, we edited each video and added beautiful imagery to bring a visual dimension to the story behind each fragrance.”
— Nicole Confrey, Video Editor
Perfumer Cecile Hua and Founder of Le Cherche Midi Nathan Motylinksi behind the scenes on the shoot.
You can view the Le Cherche Midi site at www.lecherchemidi.com. Follow them on twitter here and become a fan of Le Cherche Midi on Facebook!
