What does cryptocurrency smell like? Ozone, salt and moss, according to Binance’s new fragrance, “CRYPTO”.
Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, but the company faces serious challenges. The company and its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines to the U.S. Department of Justice. Binance has since laid off two-thirds of its staff and suffered a 75% drop in trading revenue.
Meanwhile, Binance’s marketing department is tackling a different type of problem (one that involves less risk of fraud). To celebrate International Women’s Day, Binance launched an eye-catching campaign to urge women to get into cryptocurrencies through the power of… fragrances.
“I think the goal of this is to be irreverent, to be fun, to try to push the boundaries,” Binance CMO Rachel Conlan told TechCrunch. “While there are always some people who get angry, we are confident that this is opening up the discussion in the right way, and we also had an all-female team who worked on this.”
binance troubled perfume on X yesterday and received hundreds of responses, many of which said the same thing: “imagine the smell.” The chorus is derived from a lewd 4chan meme, but like Pepe the Frog, the joke has been reappropriated among cryptoevangelists.
One might assume that the “CRYPTO” scent, also known as “Eau de Binance,” would smell like the last day of a tense hackathon where no one has had time to shower. Or maybe it smells like Sam Bankman-Fried’s jail cell. But that’s the stereotype Conlan is trying to fight to make the crypto space seem more inclusive.
The actual scent is described as follows: “This fragrance opens with refreshing notes of ozone, salt and moss, evoking the essence of a cool, invigorating breeze. The heart notes reveal a luxurious blend of oud, mandarin and precious woods, while the base notes of amber, woods and musk provide a warm, musky, sweet and earthy aroma, which radiates sophistication.
Say what you want about “Eau de Binance,” but it beats the cryptocurrency industry’s contribution to International Women’s Day in 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 cryptosphere has struggled to shake off the stench of the men’s locker room. Boston Consulting Group found that only 7% of web3 founders are women, and among top crypto startups, 27% of employees are women. That gender disparity also extends to cryptocurrency investors.
Binance made around 100 bottles of the perfume, which is not actually for sale; Instead, women can try the scent at pop-ups in a Dubai mall. It seems far-fetched that getting a sample of “CRYPTO” perfume while shopping would change a woman’s opinion about investing in digital assets. But Conlan maintains that the activation is brazen. The absurdity of the perfume is supposed to draw people in (“imagine the smell”), while the underlying promotion is that the first 5,000 women to complete a beginner course on Binance Academy will earn $25 in USDT.
In a conversation with Conlan, I asked her if she’s concerned that the campaign might seem to flatten women into a stereotype, implying that women are only interested in hyper-feminized things like perfumes and shopping. I told her I don’t wear perfume and I don’t know many women who do. But Conlan points out that fragrances are culturally prevalent in Europe and the Middle East, where she resides.
“The last thing I would want in this is to be condescending. “What I want to do is be ironic,” Conlan said. “We have framed a lot of cryptocurrencies as if they were the brothers, the crypto brothers, a very male-dominated space. So it’s about being a little more ironic and jokey with the satirical, and borrowing the codes of the fragrance industry and the beauty industry, of things that attract attention.
If this is truly satirical as Conlan says, then the success of the satire depends on what Binance is mocking. Is this perfume a genuine attempt to get women to learn more about finances, and if so, what does that 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 so confusing that the idea of crypto perfume can seem more condescending than fun.
“We really wanted to play emotional with this,” he said. “What does that memory of your first step into the world of cryptocurrencies evoke and make you feel?”
It’s hard to get over 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’re not just in this once a year when we announce a new data or a new campaign,” he said. “This is something we are very passionate about as a company and something we strongly believe will improve the industry. The more women we bring to work professionally here, the more products will be designed with men and women in mind.”
