Truth is, the global economy can sometimes stink. So the World Economic Forum is targeting the noses of the 2,400 global leaders at the group's 38th annual meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland.
Perfume-pumping machines in the main conference halls will spray eight specially created fragrances such as Artemis and Lavender Fields to relieve any unpleasant aromas that settle on delegates, who include Chevron chief executive David O'Reilly, JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
The creator of eau de Davos is Christophe Laudamiel, a French chemist who is senior perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances. The US-based company blends aromas for major fashion houses. "WEF called in August and interviewed me for three hours to make sure I wasn't a weirdo," says Laudamiel, who earned his chemistry degree at the University of Strasbourg and was the chief "perfumer creator" at Procter & Gamble.
The 38-year-old aroma engineer spent the next six months in his company's labs in Berlin and Manhattan, working with 2,200 vials of potions and secretly constructing "chords and arpeggios" of scents to make the World Economic Forum perfumes.
Laudamiel's mission is to create and circulate aromatic moments that evoke the intimacy of the meeting, while helping delegates solve global calamities against a backdrop of crisis. Paramount among what the WEF's 2008 programme portrays as a global "contagion" is the fallout from lenders marking down more than €50 billion after a surge in US subprime mortgage defaults.
"The aroma of subprime is an interesting concept, and that's one of the reasons I'm fragrancing the rooms," Laudamiel says. "I want my perfumes to overcome the gloom.
"It's important we leave sufficient room for the young people involved in the forum to develop seminars like this," says Klaus Schwab, the WEF's 69-year-old founder and chairman.
The perfuming of Davos is raising some noses. "It's downright bizarre," says delegate Bill Margaritis, senior vice president of investor relations at FedEx.
"Travelling at great cost to the Swiss Alps to sniff perfume isn't going to play well back home . . . What is WEF doing, trying to recreate the Oracle of Delphi by releasing vapours on delegates?" - (Bloomberg)
