eos + Refinery29 Are Giving Fragrance Culture a Mic

With NOSE DIVE, their fragrance and pop-culture podcast hosted by Asia Grant, eos and Refinery29 are turning scent into a conversation worth tuning in for.

Fragrance gives us plenty to talk about before we ever get to the bottle. There are the scents we associate with particular people, the memories we’re trying to recreate, and the moods we want to carry into a room. NOSE DIVE, the fragrance and pop-culture podcast co-produced by eos Products and Refinery29, makes that personal territory the basis of an ongoing conversation.

Hosted by Asia Grant, a NYC-based fragrance expert and founder of Scent Social Club, the show explores the relationship between scent, identity, memory, and culture through conversations with guests. Among them is fashion editor, stylist, and tastemaker Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, whose episode, “Smells Like: Five Stars,” explores travel, self-expression, and confidence. Additional episodes have been released since her appearance, extending the conversation across the series.

For The Beauty Brief, the marketing story is the platform taking shape across those conversations. eos is investing in a format where fragrance can sustain an editorial world, giving its audience a reason to spend time with the brand outside of a product launch or shopping decision.

Beauty brands have gotten very good at making content we can shop. Creating something we choose to watch or listen to requires its own creative proposition. Here, that proposition is the personal world surrounding scent: where it takes us, what it brings back, and how it helps us express ourselves.

“The goal wasn’t to build a podcast around eos products,” says Kelsey Newberry, Vice President, Brand Marketing, eos Products. “It was to use our point of view and credibility in scent to create entertaining conversations about a subject our community is already fascinated by.”

Following the audience’s curiosity

The strongest starting point for a brand platform is often something its audience is already doing. In eos’s case, that meant paying attention to how people were discussing fragrance, then developing a format that could support their curiosity.

“We saw an opportunity for eos to go deeper into those conversations in a way that felt natural for us because fragrance has always been such an important part of our brand,” Newberry explains.

Scent offers especially rich material because its associations are so personal. A fragrance can bring back a childhood bathroom, a first relationship, a particular summer, or a version of yourself you’re trying to become. Those stories give a host and guest plenty to explore while keeping the subject connected to the brand.

Grant’s fragrance expertise gives the series a relevant foundation, while each guest brings another set of experiences and associations into the discussion. Karefa-Johnson’s appearance, for example, creates room to connect fragrance with fashion, travel, and personal style. Across an ongoing series, that structure gives the subject room to expand through different perspectives.

Social can introduce a topic and spark a response. A podcast gives people time to unpack it, follow an unexpected connection, and share the details that make a story memorable.

“For us, that’s where branded content gets really interesting,” Newberry says. “You start with something people care about, rather than something the brand needs to say.”

It’s a useful brief for marketers. Before deciding which product message belongs in a new format, ask what would make someone choose that format in the first place. The audience needs a reason to press play.

A partnership with an editorial purpose

Refinery29 brought an audience Newberry describes as aligned with eos’s young Gen Z and millennial community, alongside podcast expertise and a collaborative approach to creative direction.

“We really wanted to shape fragrance conversation, rather than simply place ad reads into a show,” she says.

The partnership gave eos a role in developing an editorial platform where fragrance enthusiasts, creators, and cultural voices could explore scent as identity and self-expression. Its value, in Newberry’s account, included both access to an audience and the ability to help shape what that audience would experience.

That’s a meaningful consideration for brands evaluating media partnerships. Audience alignment establishes the potential fit; the creative relationship determines what the partners can actually build together.

The host is part of that equation, too. Grant brings a fragrance perspective that connects directly to the subject, giving the series a consistent voice as guests and conversations change. Together, the partners, host, and guest format create a structure with room for both continuity and discovery.

Giving people room to play

Newberry’s view of Gen Z fragrance behavior helps explain the opportunity. She describes an audience experimenting with layering, formats, and price points, choosing scents to suit different moods and aesthetics rather than committing to one permanent signature.

“They’re using fragrance to express who they are in a particular moment, whether that’s their mood, their aesthetic or simply how they want to feel that day,” she says.

Within the eos community, that experimentation can include layering body wash, lotion, and mist, or combining fragrances into an individual routine. The consumer takes an active role in how the products come together.

“This generation doesn’t want a brand dictating what they should smell like or who they should aspire to be,” Newberry explains. “They want the tools to experiment, play and decide that for themselves.”

For marketers, that opens up a more expansive content world. Tutorials can help people experiment, while conversations can explore the memories, tastes, and influences behind their choices. A brand gains more to talk about when it gets curious about the person using the product.

NOSE DIVE gives eos a format for that curiosity, with new episodes creating additional opportunities to explore what fragrance means to different people.

Attention has a job beyond conversion

Newberry poses a useful question when considering content: would someone choose to spend time with it if there weren’t a product at the end?

It’s a demanding standard in a category where so much content revolves around launches, demonstrations, and shopping prompts. It also creates room for a brand to become familiar through experiences that entertain, inform, or introduce an interesting perspective.

“Something like Nose Dive gives us permission to go deeper into fragrance and the culture around it without turning every conversation into a product pitch,” she says. “It builds affinity and gives people another way into the eos brand.”

That is the business role eos assigns to the platform: creating additional reasons to engage and opportunities for repeated contact around a subject the audience enjoys. An ongoing series gives that ambition a practical structure, with each episode offering another invitation to return.

Newberry describes the response as positive, attributing it to the approach to the partnership and the way the brand appears within the episodes. As she explains it, eos’s fragrance focus allows its products and themes to fit naturally into the conversations.

For other brands, the useful question is whether their presence adds something to the experience. A relevant product can belong in an entertaining format, but the entertainment still has to earn the audience’s time.

A platform with room to grow

eos sees NOSE DIVE as more than a campaign. Newberry connects it to the brand’s broader ambition to help shape fragrance culture and create original platforms around scent.

“The opportunity is to keep evolving it based on where fragrance culture and our community take us,” she says.

That ambition creates an ongoing creative responsibility. A platform needs enough depth to keep finding compelling guests, stories, and perspectives as its audience’s interests evolve. Fragrance gives eos a broad territory to explore, with Grant’s expertise and the guest conversations providing a framework for continued discovery.

For beauty marketers, the opportunity is to look closely at the subjects surrounding their products. There may be a conversation customers already want to have, with enough substance to support something they will return to.

With NOSE DIVE, eos and Refinery29 are betting that an interest in fragrance can sustain that relationship across episodes. The product gives the brand an entry point. The conversations give people a reason to keep listening.

Explore NOSE DIVE, and watch Gabriella Karefa-Johnson’s “Smells Like: Five Stars” episode on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.