What does crypto smell like? Ozone, salt and moss, according to Binance’s new fragrance, ‘CRYPTO’.
Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, but it faces serious challenges. The company and its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines to the US Department of Justice. Its American arm, Binance.US, laid off two-thirds of its staff and suffered a 75% drop. in trading income, at that time. Following the publication, a spokesperson shared that in February, Binance’s international exchange reached its highest trading volume in six months.
Meanwhile, Binance’s marketing department faces a different kind of problem (one that carries less risk of fraud). To celebrate International Women’s Day, Binance has launched an explosive campaign to encourage women to get into crypto through the power of … fragrance.
“I think the point of this is to be irreverent, to be fun, to push the boundaries,” Binance CMO Rachel Conlan told TechCrunch. “While there are always going to be some people who are going to be upset, we’re confident that this opens the conversation in the right way, and what’s more, we had an all-female team working on it.”
Binance teased the fragrance at X yesterday and received hundreds of responses, many of which said the same thing: “imagine the smell.” The refrain comes from a lewd 4chan meme, but like Pepe the Frog, the joke has been re-appropriated among crypto-evangelists.
You can guess that the perfume “CRYPTO” – which is also referred to as “Eau de Binance” – would smell like the last day of a tense hackathon where no one had time to shower. Or maybe it smells like Sam Bankman-Fried’s prison cell. But that’s the stereotype Conlan is trying to tackle to make the crypto space seem more inclusive.
The actual fragrance is described as follows: “This fragrance opens with refreshing notes of ozone, salt and moss, evoking the essence of a crisp and refreshing gas. The heart notes reveal a luxurious blend of oud, mandarin and precious woods, while the base notes of amber, wood and musk provide a warm, musky and earthy scent that exudes elegance.
Say what you will about “Eau de Binance,” but it goes beyond the crypto industry’s contribution to International Women’s Day 2022, when Bain Capital Crypto announced its new investment team by excitedly posting a collage of seven men. But even as more women enter the industry, the crypto realm is struggling to shake the stench of a men’s locker room. The Boston Consulting Group found that only 7% of founders of web3 are women, and among top crypto startups, 27% of employees are women. That gender inequality is widening and to crypto investors.
Binance made about 100 bottles of the perfume, which isn’t actually for sale — instead, women can sample the scent at pop-ups in a mall in Bahrain. It seems that getting a perfume sample of ‘CRYPTO’ while shopping will change a woman’s mind about investing in digital assets. But Conlan argues that activation is cheeky. The absurdity of the scent is supposed to lure people in (“imagine the smell”), while the underlying promotion is that the first 5,000 women to complete a beginner’s course at Binance Academy will earn $25 in USDT.
In conversation with Conlan, I asked if she was concerned that the campaign might appear to flatten women into a stereotype, implying that women are only interested in hyper-feminized things like perfume and shopping. I told her I don’t wear perfume and I don’t know many women who do. But Conlan points out that perfumes are more prevalent culturally in Europe and the Middle East, where she is based.
“The last thing I would want for this is to patronize. What I want is to be stressed,” Conlan said. “We’ve framed a lot of crypto as the brothers, the crypto bros, a very male-dominated space. So it’s about being a little bit more spontaneous and messing around with the satirical, and borrowing from the codes of the perfume industry and the beauty industry, for things that get attention.”
If this is truly satirical as Conlan says, then the success of the satire depends on what Binance is actually mocking. Is this fragrance a genuine attempt to get women to learn more about finance, and if so, what does this marketing strategy say about the company’s view of women? When it comes to gender diversity in finance, the solution isn’t as simple as a spray bottle of essential oils. But the messages get mixed up so that the idea of crypto-scenting can come off as polite rather than funny.
“We really wanted to play to the sentimental with this one,” he said. “What does this memory of your first step into crypto challenge and make you feel?”
It’s hard to get past the idea that what women really need to overcome sexism in tech is a whiff of Eau de Binance. But Conlan’s intentions seem genuine, if easily misinterpreted.
“We don’t just get into it once a year when we announce a new data point or a new campaign,” he said. “This is something we are very passionate about as a company and something we strongly believe will make the industry better. The more women we bring in to work professionally here, the more products will be designed with men and women in mind.”
Update, 3/6/23, 10:30 AM. ET to clarify that Binance.US has experienced layoffs and reductions in trading volume and to add additional information about Binance’s international trading volume.
