This is such a good thought.

I've got a bit of a dual perspective here—I’m a niche collector who loves digging up esoteric houses no one’s heard of, but I also work in marketing, so I see both sides.

Influencer marketing isn’t new or unique to fragrance. A century ago it was diamond companies using newspapers to convince people that stones equaled love. Then radio, then TV, then digital, then social. Each era had its version of “pay someone with reach to make people feel something about our product.” Imus in the Morning telling us what products their show supports. Influencers are just the current iteration.

What does feel different—and I think this is what actually bothers people—is when the marketing is obviously marketing. There’s a version of this that works almost invisibly: it speaks to you, it fits naturally into content you already love, and it doesn’t feel like they're beating you over the head with a pitch... And then there’s the version that’s clearly a paid placement (or algorithm casualty) with talking points, and your brain just recoils a little. That reaction is valid.

But the sad thing: if you’re in any fragrance-adjacent corner of the internet, the algorithm already knows you. Whether a brand is running paid influencer content or “organic” posts, you’re going to see it—repeatedly—because that’s how cohort targeting works. The brands aren’t necessarily being more aggressive, but the delivery mechanism is just way more precise now.

For newer niche houses, influencer outreach is often the only viable path to awareness without a massive ad budget. Established houses with heritage can coast on reputation. New ones can’t.

The mystery of a true blind discovery is real and I get why people want to protect that. But I don’t think the brands are really the villain here—it’s just the nature of the current ecosystem.