Brand elevation agency Free The Birds has partnered with global beauty pioneer Avon on its Perfect Nonsense launch: a bold new fragrance collection designed to reshape the perception of Avon Fragrances for a modern audience. Free The Birds led the brand creation process, from strategic positioning and tone of voice to identity and packaging concepts and development.

Against a backdrop of an increasingly saturated fragrance market, Perfect Nonsense represents a strategic pivot for Avon; an entirely new brand designed to break conventions, reignite consumer excitement, and demonstrate Avon’s leadership in fragrance innovation as the world’s number one fragrance brand[1]. The range is rooted in the idea of unexpected olfactory collisions, pairing ingredients as surprising as pepper and peach, gin and bamboo, and chocolate and tuberose – celebrating individuality, creativity and modern self-expression. Anchored by the creative line “Scents that make no sense, yet arouse every sense”, the collection captures the tension between contradiction and cohesion.

Market insights reflect that younger fragrance consumers increasingly seek out brands that champion originality, sustainability and individuality – traditionally the realm of niche fragrance houses. Recognising this shift in behaviour in the mass fragrance market, Avon identified an opportunity to launch a range that would not only capture this segment, but also build lasting equity for the branded house.

Perfect Nonsense sets a new benchmark for Avon’s fragrance offering. An identity designed by Free The Birds balances the modern creativity of the new Avon motherbrand with category-specific emotional resonance, and a distinctive, inclusive visual world featuring gender-fluid storytelling and vibrant, unconventional imagery to reinforce its progressive identity.

Nick Vaus, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Free The Birds, commented, “Together with Avon, we developed a distinctive design language that fuses the emotive with the unexpected – from brand identity and tone of voice to bottle and packaging design concepts – ensuring the creative modernity at play would appeal to a new generation of fragrance consumers. It’s a project that demonstrates the power of strategic creativity to reframe a legacy brand for the future.”

Kristof Neirynck, CEO of Avon, added, “Perfect Nonsense is a milestone for Avon – a disruptive, playful, and unexpected expression of who we are becoming as a brand. Free The Birds were instrumental in helping us shape the personality of this new fragrance collection. Their creative and strategic leadership ensured that this new platform reflects the aspirations of a new generation of beauty consumers, while staying true to Avon’s enduring spirit of innovation.”

[1] As measured by volume or units sold in 2023.