The house that invented Eau de Cologne — communicating three centuries of history to a modern audience.
Johann Maria Farina founded his fragrance house in Cologne in 1709 — and in doing so, invented a category that has never gone out of fashion. Farina est. 1709 is the oldest fragrance manufacturer in the world, and the original Eau de Cologne remains in continuous production to this day, made to the same formula that enchanted the courts of Europe more than three hundred years ago.
The challenge of communicating a brand of this age is not to make it seem relevant — it is, self-evidently, the original. The challenge is to ensure that this singular status is understood by contemporary luxury consumers, journalists, and cultural commentators who may know the category but not the house that created it.
Our work with Farina centred on precisely this: building the cultural positioning of the house for a modern luxury audience. We worked with lifestyle and luxury press, cultural media, and heritage-focused journalists to tell the story of Farina’s unbroken three-century lineage — a story that includes royal warrants, Napoleonic-era correspondence, and a museum that has been open continuously since the house was founded.
The communications approach combined strategic media relations in the luxury and lifestyle press with a focus on earned editorial coverage that treated Farina not as a product but as a cultural institution. For a brand that has outlasted empires, this is the only register that makes sense.