Goal:

To develop growth and product-positioning strategies for Fifth Sense through emotional fragrance discovery and occasion-led gifting.

Tools & Technologies Used: Product positioning strategy, Consumer psychology and emotional marketing, Occasion-based GTM strategy, Q-commerce strategy, Customer experience and product discovery analysis

What I Did:

Proposed creating gifting kits specifically designed around shared memories and emotions, allowing customers to gift fragrances that represent a relationship, experience, or memorable moment.

Recommended launching these gifting kits through Q-commerce during high-intent occasions such as Valentine’s Day, Friendship Day, and other gifting occasions to capture time-sensitive demand.

Identified a key challenge in fragrance discovery: customers cannot smell a fragrance before purchasing it online.

Proposed moving beyond ingredient-based fragrance descriptions and instead anchoring each fragrance to familiar feelings, experiences, and memories that customers can immediately recognize.

For example, fragrances can be described through familiar experiences such as the smell of old books or the earthy aroma of the first rain, allowing customers to form an emotional association before experiencing the actual fragrance.

Proposed using these emotional associations to create a stronger connection between the customer's existing memory and the fragrance experience.

Analyzed the “Boyfriend Shirt” fragrance as an example of this approach. While the fragrance may not literally replicate the exact scent of a partner’s shirt, the product name and concept activate an existing emotional memory, allowing customers to mentally connect the fragrance with that familiar experience.

Hypothesized that this emotional association could be one reason customers develop a stronger affinity toward the “Boyfriend Shirt” fragrance compared with fragrances that are described primarily through conventional scent or ingredient profiles.

Challenges and Learning:

Challenge: Selling fragrances online without allowing customers to experience the actual scent, while differentiating products in a category where ingredient-based descriptions can be difficult for customers to visualize.

Learning: Developed a deeper understanding of emotional product positioning, memory-based marketing, occasion-led commerce, Q-commerce, and how familiar experiences can be used to make intangible product attributes easier for customers to understand.

Result:

Developed an emotional positioning framework that allows Fifth Sense to communicate fragrances through memories and familiar experiences rather than relying only on conventional scent descriptions.

Created an occasion-led gifting strategy using memory-based kits for moments such as Valentine’s Day and Friendship Day, with Q-commerce identified as a potential distribution channel.

Established the “Boyfriend Shirt” fragrance as a reference point for how emotional associations can help customers understand and connect with an otherwise intangible fragrance experience.

Created a product-discovery approach designed to make online fragrance selection more intuitive by helping customers imagine the emotion and memory associated with a fragrance before purchasing it.

Website: itsfifthsense (dot) com