Perfume Creation
The team composes a fragrance that doesn’t exist.
What it is
In Perfume Creation the teams are guided by perfumers and by trainers: they select the essences, try the blends and arrive at a fragrance of their own.
It doesn’t end there: the perfume then has to be presented and sold. It needs a name, a position and a way of talking about it that holds up in front of the others.
When it makes sense to choose it
It works well with commercial teams, because the second half is a real sale of a product that was born an hour earlier. Having something good and not knowing how to tell anyone about it is a problem you can see immediately.
It works well too when you need something refined, right for a formal setting, where nobody has to change their shoes.
It works less well if you’re after physical energy. You sit, you smell, and you argue.
What it looks like
A video says in thirty seconds what a page explains in a thousand words: how loud it gets, how much laughing there is, what the hands are doing.
How it actually works
It starts with a briefing, which is there to tune the activity to the group and to the objective: what needs to surface changes which essences we put on the table and how the final challenge is shaped.
Then the composition. Each team chooses among the essences, tries combinations and corrects. It’s work made of small adjustments, where one drop too many is noticeable and can’t be taken back out, so the decisions have to be made together and beforehand, not afterwards.
Finally the presentation. The fragrance has to be named, placed and sold, with a story that connects the feeling to the strategy, and at that point the teams discover that the best product doesn’t win on its own. The facilitators close with feedback on each pitch: how it was delivered, how well the team worked as one, and whether the message held together. The day after, the group has heard itself explain something it made, and it knows where the explanation was thin.
Three questions
Do you need a good nose?
No. The essences are introduced one by one before you start, and the perfumers guide the blending. The hard part is getting four people to agree on a smell.
Do you take the perfume home?
Yes, the fragrance stays with the team that composed it.
Where does it happen?
Indoors, on work tables. It doesn’t need a particular venue, and it sits well inside a convention day.
When what surfaces deserves an afterwards
An activity surfaces a great deal about how a team communicates, decides and works together, and sometimes what surfaces deserves more time, more depth and a method. That is where a Team Coaching path can begin: a different road, to be taken only if it is needed, to turn what the day made visible into a new way of working together.
Discover Team Coaching →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? +971 50 795 9666 · info @ teambuildingincentive.ae