The Trinity Forum: The Brand Perspective
Elevating the Brand Experience
The all-important brand owner view was the subject of a high-calibre final session at Trinity 2023, in which three suppliers from different categories lent their perspectives on where industry partnerships and evolution should go next.
The panel featured Beam Suntory Asia, Middle East and Africa Travel Retail Director Alasdair Dickinson, Puig Global Travel Retail Executive Vice President Kaatje Noens and Nestlé International Travel Retail (NITR) Head of Category Development Nicola Wells.
Wells presented NITR’s ‘Emporium of Goodness’ and wider strategy – now being communicated to business partners across the industry – which seeks to drive the brand powerhouse’s ambition to turn food into the number one most-purchased category in travel retail. She said: “The latest m1ndset data shows that in the first quarter of 2023, confectionery had regained its position as the joint most purchased category at 29%, a position it shares with perfumes & cosmetics.
“Our goal is to leverage the currently untapped potential of food, ensuring it is in 50% of baskets by the end of the decade. To achieve this, NITR has adopted a new way of looking at the food category and that means not just focusing on the traditional and highly attractive confectionery category, but also exploiting the opportunities across food, encompassing other categories such as coffee, health supplements and local foods alongside global food brands not yet widely present in travel retail.
Nicola Wells (above): The power of food to drive travel retail; (below left) Kaatje Noens on leveraging experience to lift spend; (below right) Alasdair Dickinson on maximising collaboration across the eco-system
“This mission seeks to drive incremental growth through conversion, increase basket spend and reignite the growth in the food category which is trailing behind the current strong growth in the domestic market.”
Declining footfall and consumer apathy are long-term challenges facing every player in the travel retail mix, as evolving consumer demographics and wider geopolitical issues continue to impact consumer spend. In addition, given the length of contracts, NITR argues that new stores need to be future-proofed with flexibility to better respond to changing consumer needs.
NITR and long-time collaborator creative retail agency Portland Design joined forces to reimagine the store experience as the ‘Emporium of Goodness’ – a concept which the partners are calling the antidote to shopper apathy.
Key principles and experience drivers include: ‘Let’s do good’, ‘Let’s be good’ and ‘Let’s feel good’ – each of which act as inspirations for the design and use of spaces in stores.
Ultimately, said NITR, the Trinity partners can elevate the experience together by going beyond the physical space on the journey; by encouraging testing and learning; by taking a consumer needs and category focus as opposed to a brand focus and by exploring blended duty free and F&B partnerships that break new boundaries for the sector.
Dickinson tackled the pain points that prevent travellers from entering travel retail stores. “We found that over 36% of passengers make their purchases elsewhere,” he explained. “30% say they don’t have enough time and 27% want to do other things [than shopping,” he noted.
“Some passengers are just not interested in entering the store because they’re literally more engaged in other activities. So now the competition is not actually happening inside the store, but outside of it.”
Dickinson brought the conversation back to Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths’ call to create the all-important emotional connection with travellers. He said: “The challenge is how we can create the desirability and special moment for our customers and guests.
“We know that a third of passengers are browsing but rather than a browsing mindset, we need to create a destination mindset through elevated airport experiences. Visiting an airport store has to be an emotive experience for the shopper and we know that this is even more important for Gen Z and Millennial shoppers.”
“In Q4 2023 we will open our first even House of Suntory shop-in-shop with a vision that highlights the storytelling, history and legacy of our Japanese whisky. This will be the first of its kind globally, including in domestic markets. It is exclusive experiences like this that are critical to driving shoppers into store and away from their phones.”
Partnering as an industry, said Dickinson, is all about developing an innovative pipeline of travel retail exclusives, engaging digital-savvy luxury shoppers with limited-edition releases and tech-empowered events and storytelling excellence.
Dickinson said: “As a liquor supplier, I often look at some of the amazing experiences in luxury fashion and P&C and I ask myself… are we doing enough? Are we being brave? Are we pushing the boundaries and stretching our thinking? Now is not the time to rest on what we have done before and expect success. The Trinity needs to work together, communicate and share the risk and responsibility of growing our categories, providing amazing experiences and making travel retail the experiential powerhouse I know it can be. Let’s reach for the stars together, if we fail together and land on the moon, that’s ok with me.”
Noens highlighted two memorable brand campaigns from Puig: Rabanne and Penhaligon’s to show how partnerships can be elevated.
“During COVID, we doubled down on travel retail as a growth channel and we launched Rabanne Phantom and Fame as global travel retail-exclusives in 2021 and 2022.
“We took over Heathrow Terminal 2 with a golden Rabanne animation. This activation marked the first time that we offered Rabanne accessories alongside the fragrances and shows what can be done when we stop saying no to each other and really embrace meaningful collaboration.”
“We are extremely proud of this. This showed our bold, long-term thinking. We had passengers who didn’t know our brand but were familiar with the fashion house. We had passengers who visited the animation because they could customise the bags with charms, which was a feature exclusive to Heathrow.”
She also highlighted the example of a new 100sq m Penhaligon’s store with China Duty Free group in Hainan, featuring experiences and new areas for discovery.
On how the Trinity can better collaborate to deliver even more memorable stores and animations, Noens said: “We want to be challenged, we don’t want to play the price game but we want to win in terms of experience and fun. We want to give passengers something that they can’t resist so we can turn them into consumers for all of us.”
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The Moodie Davitt eZine
Issue 329 | 22 November 2023
The Moodie Davitt eZine is published 14 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 kristyn@moodiedavittreport.com