Established in the United States in 1996, today the Febreze odor eliminators are available all over the world, including European, African, and Asian countries, along with Australia and New Zealand.
Apart from being a super popular brand of odor eliminators, Febreze also has a very interesting marketing history. It all started in the 1990s when Procter & Gamble decided to develop a remedy for odors. The company spent millions of dollars to develop a fairly affordable to produce colorless liquid that could be sprayed on any fabric surface imbued with an unpleasant odor.
But Procter & Gamble was in for a serious disappointment. The product sells poorly from the start and gets worse and worse as time goes on. And all because the housewives were used to persistent odors in their homes and they did not need an odor remedy at all.
Then Procter & Gamble assembled a serious marketing team to find ways to promote Febreze products. The specialists conducted interviews with customers to find out how, when, and what the product was used for. Among the interviewees was a housewife who shared that the freshener is just a nice finishing touch to her daily cleaning routine, after which the house smells fresh and pleasant.
So the position in advertising of the Febreze brand was changed and it was marketed not as a savior from unpleasant odors in the house, but as an air freshener. Two months after the change of strategy, sales of the freshener doubled.
Today, the Febreze brand produces dozens of different fragrances for the home. Including specialized ones, such as those for bathrooms and cars. Febreze aerosol air freshener removes stifling musty odors and replaces them with a fresh scent. Febreze is unique in that it not only masks odors like other air fresheners but also eliminates them.
What is Febreze?
Febreze is the name of one of the Procter & Gamble brands, specializing in the production of household odor eliminators. The brand has been on the market since the middle of the 1990s, and today it takes the leading position in the United States in its segment.
In terms of visual identity, despite the amount of the logo redesign, Febreze has been quite a consistent brand. Its badge has always been used in a fresh blue color palette, and the wordmark is always a star of the composition.
The original Febreze logo, created in 1996, has stayed with the brand for the first eight years of its existence. It was a bold yet narrowed custom lettering in the title case of a sans-serif typeface with the stylized “F” and “Z”, which had their horizontal bars detached from the bodies and elongated, waving to the right.
The redesign of 2004 has significantly changed the Febreze logo concept, adding a graphical element to the refined lowercase wordmark. The light-blue lettering in a smooth handwritten typeface was accompanied by a schematic image of a window with a gradient thick stroke in the background, signifying a fresh breeze.
Another version of the Febreze logo was introduced in 2012. The lettering was modernized and balanced, which gave a more confident and elegant look to the whole badge. Now the smooth lowercase wordmark in dark gradient shades of blue was set against a plain white background and enclosed into a circular frame of the same palette. The upper part of the medallion was decorated by a wide wavy stroke in lighter shades of blue.
The redesign of 2017 simplified the Febreze logo by removing the circular frame from the composition. Now it is just the lettering in a familiar custom typeface and a long elegant stroke above it. However, the palette of the stroke was changed and now it featured the same shades as the characters of the inscription.
The elegant lowercase lettering from the official Febreze logo is set in a custom sans-serif typeface with elongated and waving bars of the characters. The closest commercial font to the one, used in this insignia, is, probably, Zar2 Script or P22 Sneaky Pro Trade, but with significant modifications of the contours.
As for the color palette of the Febreze visual identity, it is based on the gradient shades of dark blue, which are in the first place associated with freshness, and this is what the products of the brand tend to give to their customers.