Travel Exclusive Premieres Are Back with Paco Rabanne 

Brands have always placed great value on the high exposure that airport stores give to their brands and products and quite often select the travel retail and airport segments for their world premieres. The travel retail channel has traditionally represented an opportunity for brands to trial innovations as well as new products, retail concepts and services to the global traveler. It also provides an opportunity to recruit new consumers, encourage existing loyal consumers to purchase more and foster affinity and advocacy.

Slowly but surely, the global travel industry is making a comeback. And one of the clearest signals is the travel-exclusive pre-launch of Paco Rabanne´s latest masculine fragrance, Phantom, which took place last 1^st July.

A technological scent

Described as a technological fragance, Phantom was created using ‘Augmented Creativity’, a cutting-edge process that combines artificial intelligence, consumer studies and neuroscientific approaches to quantify the emotional benefits of fragrance ingredients. This technology allowed the Paco Rabanne perfumers to select ingredients that stimulated specific sensations and fine-tune their doses.

But the role of technology goes beyond the creation process and Phantom is Paco Rabanne’s first-ever connected fragrance bottle with its contactless chip. Users can simply tap their phones on the robot-shaped bottle to take it off. They can also use their mobiles to discover the Phantom universe and explore exclusive Paco Rabanne content, download interactive filters, personalized playlists, or augmented reality games.

Taking the scene

The launch of Phantom has been supported by what the brand described as Puig’s “most ambitious travel retail campaign to date”, with large-scale omni-channel activities taking place across many airport locations in all continents. The campaign consisted of a large number of animations including some of our key airport locations such as London Heathrow, Madrid, Barcelona and London Gatwick to mention just a few. Futuristic spaces boasted eye-catching decorations, with promoters in silver jumpsuits inviting customer to the touchless fragrance discovery points, personalization areas or to the ‘dance with Phantom’ game. All elements were designed to ensure a complete brand immersion for the customer into the world of this exciting new fragrance.

Driven by digital technology and inspired by sci-fi, activations used the striking chrome-color palette to transport customers to a futuristic World… just as we always used to do in the “good old days” of the travel retail industry!