In order to engage a new generation of women with their fragrance portfolio, Chanel partnered with premium youth lifestyle channel i-D, to create The Fifth Sense, a platform celebrating female creativity inspired by the multi-sensory complexities of scent and the empowering feminine spirit of Chanel. The Fifth Sense sought to not only celebrate women who make, but to allow women to make - by commissioning a series of multimedia artistic projects from female artists across different disciplines including set design, photography, programming, and filmmaking. We asked each artist to create new digital work inspired by Chanel Fragrance, debuting each alongside a series of female-directed documentaries about the artist and the other women working across her creative discipline. This, alongside daily editorial features, has culminated in a multi-faceted platform championing female creative talent, underscoring how Chanel Fragrance is an essential means by which women around the world can truly express themselves.

The 360 multi-market program encompasses:

- Multi-sensory works from female artists capturing their personal experience of Chanel Fragrance. Set designer Es Devlin created an immersive installation that evokes the sensation of falling through memory, photographer Harley Weir captured a series of images and films featuring five women who embody Chanel Nº5. Graphic designer Lucy Hardcastle created an interactive game from code in collaboration with singer Li Yuchun and music producer Fatima Al-Qadiri, inspired by Nº5 L’Eau, and Israeli filmmaker Alma Har’el directed a film about a young woman with synesthetic visions inspired by key notes of Nº5 L’Eau.

- Female-directed documentary films profiling the artists, featuring interviews with other female creatives from the artist’s discipline, discuss what it means to be a woman working across these fields today.

- Daily editorial in five languages featuring a global community of creatives – including Debbie Harry, Chloe Sevigny and Nisennenmodnai

The Fifth Sense Platform has already generated a strong following amongst the creative community with over 4MM visitors dwelling on site for over 3 minutes and up to 53% of people returning to site, pointing to the fact that the audience is truly engaged. There have been over 25MM video views. There has been a 20 percentage point uplift in the number of young women who think that ‘Chanel is empowering’ and a 23 percentage point uplift in purchase intent.

With The Fifth Sense, Chanel has created an entirely new way of communicating fragrance that is specifically designed to resonate with modern women and truly impact culture.

Working with the most exciting and influential female artists around the world, we have created a body of new multimedia works inspired by scent, premiering on The Fifth Sense platform alongside editorial articles, films, photo features, interactive experiences, music compositions and more - a truly integrated approach. As a result The Fifth Sense has become a meaningful cultural hub for inspiring female creativity that not just entertains but also pushes culture forward.

The fragrance category as a whole is in decline amongst young women. Our brief from Chanel was to reinvigorate the category, by making a meaningful connection with a new generation and communicating something invisible yet evocative in an increasingly digital world. Through a global study with young women across nine countries, we found that current fragrance advertising wasn't connecting: it presented an unobtainable world of fantasy that was often defined by an outdated view of women. Chanel Fragrance is built on Coco Chanel's philosophy that a woman “should be two things: who and what she wants.” Fragrance is an amplification of who you are, and the Chanel brand is synonymous with female empowerment. We were challenged to communicate these ideas in an unexpected way to a new generation and to make a cultural impact that authentically reflected the attitudes, interests and values of young women around the world today.

The fragrance category as a whole is in decline amongst young women. Our brief from Chanel was to reinvigorate the category, by making a meaningful connection with a new generation and communicating something invisible yet so evocative in an increasingly digital world. Through a global study with young women across nine countries, we found that current fragrance advertising wasn't connecting: it presented an unobtainable world of fantasy that was often defined by an outdated view of women. Chanel Fragrance is built on Coco Chanel's philosophy that a woman “should be two things: who and what she wants.” Fragrance is an amplification of who you are, and the Chanel brand is synonymous with female empowerment. We were challenged to communicate these ideas in an integrated and unexpected way to a new generation to make a cultural impact that authentically reflects the attitudes, interests and values of women around the world today.