The Scent Sensibility

In Consumed: Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day: A cleaning fluid brand that combines the idealized Midwestern mom with boutique chic.

Depending on where you first encounter them, you might, for a second or two, mistake Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day products for some venerable brand. (Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap leaps to mind.) Aside from that homey name, you’ll notice the text-heavy design on these detergents, counter-top sprays and dishwashing liquids, definitely out of step with the sleek, uncluttered and information-light look that dominates modern packaging. But a glance at that text quickly reveals that you have not stumbled upon a holdover from the days of retail past: “Aromatherapeutic household cleaners” is certainly not an old-school product claim. And, in fact, the Mrs. Meyer’s brand is only a few years old; from a line of a half-dozen products in 2001, it has grown to a range of items that include soaps, wipes and even pet shampoos, sold in about 3,500 grocery and other stores across the country.

The vaguely nostalgic look and its unlikely pairing with the new-agey aromatherapy concept is, of course, intentional. Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day was created by Monica Nassif, who previously worked in marketing at Target and at a product-development firm called Kilter Incorporated. But her epiphany, she says, occurred at home. Every time she finished cleaning her house, she explains, she would light an Aveda candle to blot out the scent of the cleaning products. Why not roll that post-cleaning step into the cleaning process? Why not make it the center of the cleaning process? At the time, she says, there were ”not a lot of interesting scents” in the cleaning category. So while Mrs. Meyer’s retro packaging makes promises about eco-friendliness and effectiveness, the guiding theme is smell. The whole product line, in fact, is organized around three scents — geranium, lemon verbena, lavender.

Her first move, however, was not the creation of Mrs. Meyer’s. It was another line of cleaning products she started in 2000, called Caldrea and found in exclusive boutique settings, built around hoity-toity fragrances with names like Citrus Mint Ylang Ylang and Basil Blue Sage, with price points to match ($10 for 11 ounces of hand soap). But even as she worked to establish Caldrea as a relatively exclusive product, she was considering ways to translate the sell-through-smell idea into a more mass-oriented iteration (before somebody else did). That’s what led her to Mrs. Meyer — Thelma Meyer, her mother.

As Nassif (and a sort of ”letter from our icon” on the Mrs. Meyer’s Web site) tells it, Thelma Meyer raised nine children in rural Iowa, kept her house clean and was thrifty and practical to boot. The idea is that all of Mrs. Meyer’s (the brand) attributes flow from Mrs. Meyer (the person) — or at least they don’t contradict her. For instance, while it is hard to imagine Mrs. Thelma A. Meyer buying Aveda candles, her Web site statement promises that the cleaners ”work like the dickens on dirt” and are ”also aromatherapeutic, which is another fancy word for healthy and good.”

Mrs. Meyer’s sells at somewhat higher-end supermarkets like Whole Foods and Wild Oats, but also at Ace Hardware and some Kroger locations. Fragrance-based marketing can take the form of hand-lotion testers, single-use dish soap, surface-wipe samples and in-store demonstrations. But it can be hard to pull these things off in the typical grocery-store aisle.

This is why that almost-anachronistic packaging matters. Sharon Werner, whose St. Paul design firm did it, points out that customers in a boutique specializing in aromatherapy products would quite likely get an explanation (and pitch) from a salesperson. In a grocery store, the packaging plays that role, she says. (For instance: ”Geraniums, so pleasing to the eye on a summer day, are said to uplift & soothe the mind with a REFRESHING floral scent.”) Werner says that when she works with Nassif, they spend a lot of time ”channeling” their Midwestern moms. That’s why the look echoes authoritative products ”that our parents depended on” and why the straightforward scents are linked by straightforward colors, she says: ”Mrs. Meyer would color code.”

That said, the packaging also had to look good whether or not you read a word of the copy and whether or not you cared what the upsides of aromatherapy might be. And in fact, some of the stores that stock Mrs. Meyer’s turn out to be more high-end boutiques that think the stuff just looks ”kind of hip,” Nassif says. Would Thelma shop in such a place? Probably not. But the goal isn’t to sell to the Mrs. Meyers of the world; it’s to sell to those who like the idea of her.