Blackjack Promotions, a leader in retail focused experiential marketing, has delivered a complete package for the launch activity of Michael Kors’ new perfume, Wonderlust, in Manchester’s Trafford Centre, with the activation culminating at Birmingham’s Bull Ring today (October 4, 2016).

Working from an initial brief and a 30’ TV ad, Blackjack developed the creative, designed the stand, created a social sharing mechanism, recruited and provided brand ambassadors, as well as full build and installation.

The end product is an aspirational and luxurious space featuring images of the High Life as backdrops plus a luxury ‘boat’ which passers-by are invited to sit in and have their own personal GIF created. From here, consumers can immediately choose to have their GIF emailed to them or can share directly to any social media platform of their choosing, using the hashtag #wonderlust.

The name of the new perfume, Wonderlust, is a play on words, marrying ‘wonder’ with ‘wanderlust (the desire to travel and to escape). The concept of ‘escape’ is central to the Wonderlust story, according to Michael Kors. The advertising campaign includes a TV commercial and video, developed by Mario Testino, featuring the ‘face’ of the scent, a gold sequined-dress-clad Lily Aldridge, in an unknown far-flung locale. She escapes from a yacht in a small speedboat with her lover, Dutch model Wouter Peelen, and they head off into a rose-fueled sunset.

The stand was live at Manchester Trafford Centre on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th September 2016, with shoppers being directed into Boots to buy. It then moved to Birmingham’s Bull Ring shopping centre from October 1st to 4th, driving shoppers into Debenhams.

The Michael Kors #wonderlust project is the first to be delivered by Blackjack Promotions new Account Director—Experiential, Andy DeVito, who recently joined with the brief of delivering ‘end to end’ services for clients.

DeVito moved to Blackjack from specialist events, experiential and retail production house Bluedog Productions, where he was Airport Specialist and Head of Global Travel Retail, delivering event and experiential activations and retail builds in numerous international territories for clients including Bacardi, Remy Martin and Stolichnaya.

DeVito says: “It has been a fantastic campaign to work on. Delivering a project from initial creative concept through to build and installation and meet a strict staffing brief has been a great achievement for all involved. Not only have we increased the social reach of the Wonderlust launch, but using our extensive database, we were able to carefully select suitable sites in close proximity to local department stores and drive sales directly from the live experience to till point. We saw an unprecedented uplift in sales of the Wonderlust product with the additional benefit of the majority of consumers upping their purchase to the 100ml fragrance size.

Another great OOH experience in partnership with Talon.

Originally posted The Marketing Blog 5 October 2016