By a Nose

Though River North's LaSalle Power Co. slings tater tots and chicken strips, the restaurant smelled more like flowers than fried food on Monday night, when Gain overtook the venue for a Mandy Moore concert that was filled with laundry-scented candles and reed diffusers. The event was the result of the detergent company's "Love at First Sniff " contest, which invited Gain consumers from across the country to submit viral videos of themselves describing their affection for the product. Videos were posted on the company's Web site, and a drawn-at-random winner, Stephanie Durant of Evanston, earned 11 tickets to a private Mandy Moore concert in (or, it turned out, near) her hometown.

Lauren Thaman, who promotes Gain products as the associate director of external relations for fabric care at Procter & Gamble, claimed that the contest was not intended to build awareness for a specific product or scent. Instead, she said, "we wanted to get Gain lovers together and celebrate their love of telling their story" about why they're devotees of the detergent. Even before the contest, she said, "we got lots and lots of unprompted consumer responses telling us about the moment when they fell in love with the scent of Gain." Whatever the actual intention of the event was, it had no shortage of Gain logos.

According to Thaman, Mandy Moore counts herself as a Gain lover, a fact that Procter & Gamble uncovered when doing research on celebrities that would make appropriate reps for the product. "We reached out to her and she wrote back right away and agreed to work with us," Thaman said. Moore created her own online video to share her falling-in-love-with-Gain memories, and in mid-February the singer appeared on The Bonnie Hunt Show to announce the concert and the contest. Though she didn't provide an exact count on the number of applicants that the television spot inspired, Thaman said that thousands of people sent videos to Gain's Web site after the show aired.

After the winner had been drawn, Thaman tapped BMF Media to produce the event. Along with infusing LaSalle Power Co.'s live performance space with the aroma of Gain, BMF staffers branded the concert with a candy bar covered in Gain stickers. They also brought in a photo booth that spit out logoed strips. At the bar, specialty drinks such as the "Apple Mango Tango" and "Island Breeze" were meant to evoke the detergent's tropical fragrances; and by the elevator leading up to the performance space, bottles of the product hung in front of a vinyl backdrop that read "Chicago Loves Gain." As a final touch, the evening's takeaway gift was a bottle of Gain-scented perfume.

The concert drew some 250 attendees—among them the contest winner and 10 friends, other area applicants to the online contest, reps from local media outlets, and guests who won tickets through promotions in Metromix and on 101.9 FM. Though the concert only took place in Chicago, a Webcast of Moore's hourlong performance, which Thaman said that she hopes will spread virally, will be posted to Gain's Web site, ilovegain.com, later this week.