New client: the Alliance for Peacebuilding asks Buena to rebrand peace
Three years of research found Americans see peace as passive and out of reach. The Alliance for Peacebuilding asked us to change that. The work became the Peace Force.
A fragrance that bottles what hate smells like, so you never want to wear it.
- Client
- Peace Force
- Year
- 2023
- What we did
- Campaign, Production
- Result
- 77 people told us what hate smells like
By the numbers
- 77people surveyed on what hate smells likeAmericans asked what hate smells like. Their top answers became the ingredients on the label.
The Smell of Hate is an act of peace for the Peace Force, the peacebuilding brand Buena created with the Alliance for Peacebuilding. A luxury-style perfume, 'The Smell of Hate in America', makes something invisible impossible to ignore.
Hate is everywhere, and nobody can see it on themselves
Hate is everywhere and invisible. You can't see it, so it's easy to pretend it isn't on you. It shows up in how people talk about neighbors, strangers and the other side, and it rarely feels like hate from the inside.
Most campaigns against hate point at someone else. The Peace Force, the peacebuilding brand Buena created with the Alliance for Peacebuilding, needed acts of peace that ask people to check themselves first.
So we asked a different question. If hate were something you put on every morning, like a fragrance, what would it smell like? And would anyone still want to wear it?
A luxury fragrance designed never to be worn
Give hate a scent. A matte-black bottle reads The Smell of Hate in America, styled like a designer perfume, with the word hate set tall and narrow down the middle.
The label calls it the first perfume and cologne designed to never be worn, the literal essence of hate in America. The ingredients read like a warning: rotten fish, bad breath, rotten eggs, body odor, spoiled milk.
The tagline does the rest: Hate stinks. Don't wear it. Like every Peace Force act of peace, it ends with an invitation to join. The back of the label carries the Peace Force mark and thepeaceforce.org.
77 people told us what hate smells like
We didn't guess at the formula. In 2023 we asked 77 people what hate smells like, and each picked three answers from a list that ran from skunk to gunpowder.
Rotten eggs and rotten fish led, each chosen by about half of respondents. Bad breath, body odor and spoiled milk followed, each picked by roughly a third or more, ahead of burning smoke, gunpowder and skunk.
The top five answers became the ingredient list on the label. That is where the work got to: a bottle, a label and the research behind them.
Hate stinks. Don’t wear it.
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