Ray Breslin
5 June 2026 · 5 min read
When Scent Room asked us to take Habib Qaderi's first fragrance to market, the brief had three parts: make the launch feel like the artist, give him everything he needed to announce it himself, and get the story in front of the right readers on day one. This is how HQ by Habib Qaderi went from a finished formula to a live product.
The film and the stills
The centrepiece is a 20 second launch film: the bottle in close-up, the raw materials behind the accords (black peppercorns, amber resin, mandarin), and Habib himself, closing on the gold HQ monogram. It was shot vertical for Instagram and Reels first, because that is where his audience is. Two bottle stills came out of the same session, one with Habib facing camera, one in profile, both on black so they cut together with the film and with Scent Room's own feed.
The launch kit for the artist
A celebrity launch lives or dies on what the artist posts, so we wrote Habib a two page launch day checklist: the facts (name, link, price, edition), what to post and when, a reel caption to paste as is, story text, a week one plan, and a short list of things not to say. The link is one link, the name is one name, and nothing goes up before Scent Room says "we're live". Simple rules, no room for a wrong URL or a wrong price on launch day.
The announcement
The press release ran on Break News the day the product went on sale, with the film embedded, the product facts, and the artist's background, and it is being followed across the Core Creations network with a different angle on each site. Every placement links to the same product page, so search engines and readers land in one place.
The product itself
HQ is a 100ml extrait de parfum at 30 per cent concentration, handcrafted in Sydney by Scent Room from materials sourced from IFF, Givaudan and Firmenich. Fresh and woody: Italian mandarin, sea notes and aldehydes over black pepper, neroli and cedarwood, with tonka bean, white musk and amber underneath. A signed first edition in limited bottles at A$69, shipped Australia-wide and worldwide.
What we would tell any brand doing this
Shoot for the artist's channels first and the press second. Give the artist a kit, not a mood board. Put the price and the link in every asset. And make the product page the single destination for everything, which for HQ is Scent Room's HQ product page.