Our apologies if you speckled a bit of Moon Sparkle, Must or M by Mariah on your neck before running out the door this morning, but perfume names generally reek of unattainable artifice. Sometimes it seems as though luxury labels christen their fragrances by randomly opening the dictionary and pointing to the nearest noun. Raise your hand if you've ever worn Obsession, Opium or Organza.

With such a recognizable formula entrenched in its marketing culture, the beauty industry is more often the subject of sociological study than an originator of serious, sociological discussion. But in conceiving its new campaign, Natura, a Brazil-headquartered fragrance company that prides itself on sustainable business practices, chose to work with Madre, Buenos Aires, an agency with a rep for tossing out the beauty book.

The company's marketers specifically liked the agency's 2007 Nike Women campaign, which questioned the popularity of plastic surgery in the Argentinean capital. "We knew immediately we needed to avoid the 'fakeland' from which perfumes and cosmetics usually communicate in advertising," says Madre creative director Carlos Bayala. "Making a real, honest campaign with a strong point of view instantly separated this perfume from the majority and it reflects the spirit of Natura, its principles and the ethos of the brand."

The company sends research teams of anthropologists and local farmers across South America to source obscure plants specific to different regions for its perfumes. The fragrance Amor America derives its scent from paramela, a weed indigenous to the continent's southernmost region, Patagonia.

"Borders", an eight-minute-long web film, was inspired by that product development process. Shot National Geographic-style on two Super 16 cameras, the production team, headed by Nunchaku Cine directors Nicolas Kasakoff and Daniel Cuparo, spent 40 days in January and February traveling to 11 countries to interview the inhabitants of frontier towns and villages. The resulting footage challenges the concept of national divisions: we see a woman with a house in Chile and a garden in Argentina, a soccer pitch straddling the border between Venezuela and Brazil and floating, man-made islands in Lake Titicaca between Peru and Bolivia.

The directors needed a diverse mix of people who were comfortable on camera and had interesting stories to tell. To find them, casting director Veronica Souto traveled in advance to each location and scoped the scene. A veteran freelance casting director, she specializes in finding "real" people for features and commercials. While many locals jumped at the chance to tell their stories to Souto, others required more convincing.

Etelvina, the woman whose property crosses the Argentinean-Chilean border, initially refused to appear on camera because she felt she wasn't pretty enough for a perfume ad. "For two hours I asked her why," says Souto. "Finally she said because she wasn't a very nice-looking lady - that's something that happened everywhere."

Souto mostly traveled alone, making it harder for her to build trust with skeptical locals. But once people realized the scope of the production and the effort the 18-member production team exerted traveling to these remote villages, it became easier. To reach Etelvina's house, for example, the crew spent six hours on a minibus winding along a debris-strewn road through the Andes mountain range.

"Border towns are usually isolated and kind of forgotten by governments," says Madre art director Mariano Cassisi. "This is why, in my opinion, they appreciated our being there. I think they felt we were providing them with a space to show us their lives and their thoughts."

In Tumbes, a city on the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border, the team was welcomed by a local TV crew, who were drawn by rumors that documentary filmmakers from Hollywood were coming. At the other end of the spectrum, Bolivian soccer players in a town on the Peruvian-Bolivian border refused to participate, sparking a heated discussion with players on the Peruvian team. Even though they'd spent four hours on a plane and six hours on a bus traveling to the location, they opted to withdraw.

"We realized that it was more convenient to turn off the cameras, apologize and leave," says Cassisi. "We went back with nothing, but I guess that's part of living on the borders."

A decidedly less fluid border is the giant wall separating Tijuana in Mexico from California. One of the scripted scenes included in the final cut featured Mexican teens staging a volleyball game on the beach using the wall as a net. Souto had to find teens who could not only play at a professional level, but who wouldn't try to bolt for San Diego, thereby rankling the US customs officials (and the players' parents) who'd OK-ed the stunt. After speaking with the head of a local volleyball federation, she found four players with American visas.

For a film based on the thesis that cultural connections can survive divisive borders, the production didn't encounter much red tape. The crew found border officials surprisingly receptive to their mission, with the exception of a few customs agents in Ecuador who confiscated bug spray. Kasakoff, who had never shot a documentary project before, found the shoot liberating.

"Usually in advertising, you have to manipulate or create a concept," he says. "[The agency] gives you a concept and you have to put together everything so it goes in that one direction even if it goes against the current. This time, we had to capture the essence of what was happening in each town - we had to take the current and make it stronger."

Madre, Buenos Aires http://www.madrebuenosaries.com
Nunchaku Cine http://www.nunchakucine.com