I find perfume and aftershave commercials baffling honestly. I do not envy the marketting folks who have to put together those campaigns. It feels like they've just gotten weirder and weirder and I can't blame them. I don't know how I would market a smell to people unable to presently smell it.
I think it's just to get it to stick in people's minds, so when you're faced with an entire wall of stuff wondering what to choose you think "oh yeah, I remember that ad, it was pretty cool" which might influence enough people. I'm also reminded of the increasingly surreal cigarette ads (B&H IIRC) between banning them featuring models and being banned altogether and which got people talking; same as the Guinness "weird series" ads from around 30 years back.
