L’Oréal has created a Christmas campaign featuring four of its best-selling fragrances for the first time. Giorgio Armani Si, Lancôme La Vie est Belle, Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb and YSL Black Opium are all participating in the social media friendly #scentwithlove promotion in UK-based Boots stores.

The French beauty giant has installed ‘perfume post boxes’ in 100 Boots stores throughout the UK, encouraging shoppers to send a scented postcard to friends and family. Thus far, some 2,000 cards have been sent, and L’Oréal expects that figure to reach 10,000 by Christmas Day. Customers have also been able to tailor gift boxes with an image uploaded from their smartphone and a message.

The campaign opens up the possibility of future cross brand campaigns. “They are four fantastic brands and if we can collaborate, we will. At the same time it’s really key each have their own time to shine because they all have their own identity,” Emily Byrne, Marketing Director at L’Oreal’s designer fragrances division told The Drum

The French beauty giant is keen to stand out from the competition during this key trading period; in the month of December alone, L’Oréal rings through as many fragrance sales as it does in the first eight months of the year.

“The stakes at this time of year get incredibly higher within fragrance and every week as the market retail comes in it is double to triple what it was the week before,” said Byrne. “Fragrances are so popular around Christmas because they are a popular gift so we did some segmentation research this year – the first time it’s been done in the industry – and we found that 80 percent of fragrance shoppers have bought a product in the past 12 months as a gift for someone else, and the majority of gifters are female, so 60 percent women and 40 percent men.”

The research also revealed that some 80 percent of shoppers are uncertain whether their gift will be well received. “Gifters have a lot of people they are buying gifts for so we wanted to offer them that choice but not so much choice that they get to the stage of being overwhelmed. In the fragrance halls there are over 300 launches a year, so we wanted to pick our curated edit that can be experienced and chosen between.”