Travel retail highlights
Experience, feel, resonate – engaging the changing customer
When the largest pop-up in Singapore Changi Airport’s history is unveiled, industry observers take notice. So do consumers, who can hardly fail to notice the scale, ambition and impact of Hennessy X.O Cognac’s latest high-profile activation.
The 150sq m space allows visitors to explore the ‘Seven Worlds’ of Hennessy X.O that are brought to life in a short film directed by Ridley Scott (see below). The ‘Seven Worlds’ are creative interpretations of each tasting note, described by Hennessy’s Comité de Dégustation as illustrations of Hennessy X.O’s taste and feel: Sweet Notes, Rising Heat, Spicy Edge, Flowing Flame, Chocolate Lull, Wood Crunches and culminating in Infinite Echo.
The Seven Worlds pop-up store is located in the Terminal 1 Departure Transit Hall. It features huge screens, moving imagery, experiential booths, and custom-built tasting bars, all designed to deliver a multi-sensorial, interactive and immersive journey into Hennessy X.O’s flavours and heritage.
It is a sight to behold. As DFS Group Senior Vice President Spirits, Wine, Tobacco, Food and Gifts Brooke Supernaw put it: “A wide spectrum of touch points, creativity and innovation ensures an evocative and memorable experience for our well-travelled customers – assuring their return to our downtown T Gallerias and airport stores.”
In an exclusive interview with The Moodie Davitt Report, Moët Hennessy Global Travel Retail President Laurent Boidevezi described the importance of the travel retail channel. “[It is] so much more than just a commercial channel. It is an amazing platform on which to build brand awareness and desirability through engaging our consumers.”
Boidevezi said the way brands should engage consumers had to change in line with how consumers themselves were changing. “It is not enough to get a big billboard at the airport or do something small in a corner of a travel retail store. It will not resonate with the audience. They want to experience, they want to feel something. And that’s what we will do. Hennessy is so much more than just a product.”
Toast to an Odyssey: (Left to right) DFS Group Senior Vice President Spirits, Wine, Tobacco, Food and Gifts Brooke Supernaw; Moët Hennessy Global Travel Retail President Laurent Boidevezi; Changi Airport Group Executive Vice President, Commercial Lim Peck Hoon; and Moët Hennessy Managing Director Travel Retail Asia Pacific Vanessa Widman at the launch of the pop-up
Courtesy of Hennessy and DFS, the customer journey becomes an Odyssey at the spectacular pop-up. The activation is designed to deliver a multi-sensorial, interactive and immersive journey into Hennessy X.O’s flavours and heritage
Laurent Boidevezi:
“It is not enough to get a big billboard at the airport or do something small in a corner of a travel retail store”
The Seven Worlds pop-up store features huge screens, moving imagery, experiential booths, and custom-built tasting bars.
The circular nature of the space allows visitors to experience the seven dream-like stories that convey the richness and complexity of Hennessy Cognac
The Moodie Davitt eZine
Issue 271 | 19 November 2019
The Moodie Davitt eZine is published 20 times per year by The Moodie Davitt Report (Moodie International Ltd).
© All material is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the permission of the Publisher.
To find out more visit www.moodiedavittreport.com and to subscribe, please e-mail sinead@moodiedavittreport.com