Grey & Moxie Experiment with Febreze

By now, you’ve probably noticed that London will play host to a little sporting event this summer. That’s right, the Olympic Games 2012 will commence in the city at the end of July and from now until then you’re likely to see a slew of joyous campaigns for the greatest show on earth. However, none will probably be executed in quite the same fashion as Grey New York and Moxie Pictures’ recent spots for Febreze – which see the companies conduct smell tests to prove the efficiency of the freshener spray with the Azerbaijan Olympic wrestling team.

Directed by Jared Hess, the campaign continues on from the brand’s previous smell test concept, but this time a unique, candid aspect is adopted which saw people off the street recruited to take part in the south London shoot in October of last year.

The idea was to play on the notion that you can close your eyes but never your nose and by taking out one sense, another is heightened. If people see something in front of them, they can describe it immediately but to isolate their sense of smell and see how it’s interpreted on its own was the agency’s plan with the campaign. And what better way to do it than with Azerbaijan’s Olympic wrestlers?

“The team has some of the best wrestlers in the world and these guys are the most masculine and macho dudes you’ve ever seen" says Hess, "but they are really fun guys and they had a lot of fun helping us out.”

Shot in a darkened floor of an empty building, potential participants were pounced upon in the streets of south London and told they were coming in to do some blindfolded ‘smell tests’. The whole set up was completely genuine, with external regulators to ensure it was all legitimate.

Once inside the building, the unsuspecting blindfolded subjects were walked into a locker room gym setting where the athletes had been working out for hours in the odorous environment. The four athletes – including the European Champion and World Champion, as well as two other aspiring talents – are all potential medallists for the London Games, which aligns the campaign even further with P&G’s (parent company of Febreze) sponsorship of the event.

“There was this one guy that came in and was like, ‘right now I feel like I’m walking down the streets of Rome and I’ve just walked past a man selling flowers. It’s quite lovely and I stopped to smell them and I just feel so happy,’” recites Hess in a funny English accent, “but he took his blindfold off and wouldn’t sign [the disclaimer]. Out of 25 people you maybe get one or two that feel so freaked out.”

Grey chose Hess for his people skills and his ability to make the “non-actors” feel relaxed on the shoot. The fact that he’s got great comedic value also obviously contributed and after spending some time with the team around the capital, they realised the Azerbaijani’s enjoyed a good crack, too:

“The first day they landed, we took them all out to eat at an Azerbaijan restaurant which, in hindsight, was kind of lame for them because they’ve come all the way to London and were like ‘this is not Azerbaijani food’,” recalls the director. “It was funny because when we got to the restaurant, they were bummed but they had this old Azerbaijani guy playing traditional music and the team were laughing so hard because they listen to normal stuff like Eminem and Beyonce. It would’ve been like me being an American in Azerbaijan and them taking me to McDonald’s and saying ‘here’s an Elvis impersonator to make you feel at home’. But they do have a great sense of humour.”

You can see footage from the two-day shoot in the campaign film above and the campaign will also feature upcoming digital aspects from Moxie’s Luke Franklin.