Selena Gomez Has Scratch-and-Sniff Billboards in New York City

NY Post – There’s a strange scent in the air around the city — and it’s not just the smell of garbage in August. 

Nope. It's definitely just the smell of garbage in August. The scent of the Selena Gomez Rare Beauty billboards are not nearly strong enough to permeate through the garbage, fumes, and human waste that fills the New York City air.

Three scratch-and-sniff billboards for Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty have been installed in Manhattan. When passersby agitate specific areas on the advertisements, they get a whiff of the new Rare Eau de Parfum — the first fragrance from the phenomenally popular cosmetics brand.

Is this a prank? It seems like a prank. A pretty good one. I didn't think Selena Gomez had it in her. To launch a whole ass marketing campaign for the purpose of tricking New Yorkers into smelling walls in the middle of the city. Funniest thing she's ever done to be honest. 

“This makes me feel like I’m in elementary school,” said Melanie Peralta, a 34-year-old consultant who lives in Bushwick and smelled one of the billboards in Soho, on the corner of Grand and Lafayette, on Wednesday morning. “It reminds me of those smelly markers growing up."

They remind me of the scratch-n-sniff perfume samples in women's magazines.

It took her five scratches to get a hit of the fragrance — she was scratching in the wrong spot at first — but she was satisfied in the end.

I can't think of a better place to hang out and pickpocket people. That is entirely too much time and effort spent sniffing a wall in Soho. At least she achieved satisfaction. 

“It smells good, like light vanilla,” she said. “I’m more intrigued to want to smell the actual perfume now.”

Certainly better than the wall you spent 5 minutes with your nose pressed against. But if you get your Selena Gomez perfume in the mail, and it does smell like New York City wall, you can't really call and complain.

To make the billboards — which are also located at Canal Street and Broadway, and the Highline and West 27th, and are as large as 25-by-7 feet — Rare Beauty first developed a scented ink. 

Then the ink was wrapped in microbubbles that were printed onto different parts of the billboard. When scratched, they release the fragrance. The billboards, which were installed in late July and are up through August 10, are refreshed regularly to keep the smell strong.

I regret to inform you that the scratch-n-sniff microbubbles on the Selena Gomez Rare Eau de Parfum billboards have all been smeared with feces. They've all been compromised. I suppose I don't have any hard evidence of that, but let's be real. It's already happened. Shit, it just happened again.

Some germ-weary New Yorkers refuse to participate.

“I don’t want to touch something all these other people have touched,” said Simon Sakhai, a 37-year-old who runs a longevity startup and was passing by a billboard Wednesday morning. “This is Manhattan! You don’t touch things and then smell them. You never know what you’re going to get.”

Well said, 37-year old, Simon Sakhai who runs a longevity startup. 

A 38-year-old who works in a pottery studio around the corner from the Soho billboard, was also apprehensive.

“Since the Covid times I have tried not to touch public things,” she told The Post.

But her curiosity — and her admiration for Selena Gomez, whose face is also on the billboard — persuaded her.

“Selena is perfect, she’s just adorable. I love her,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “I decided I just wanted to try it.”  

Selena Gomez. A more powerful force than Covid. She's convinced the people of New York to not only touch the exact same spot on a city wall, but to put their noses up to it and inhale deeply. Well played, Selena. But I shudder to think what creative things the youth/homeless of lower-Manhattan will do to the scratch and sniff section of your billboards. It's all fun and games until your perfume ad reignites the AIDS epidemic.