Creating digital experiences for luxury brands
Defining digital-first luxury experiences for one of the world's most collectable whisky brands.
Defining digital-first luxury experiences for one of the world's most collectable whisky brands.
Defining digital-first luxury experiences for one of the world's most collectable whisky brands.
Bowmore is a brand that knows its place: a sought after scotch that sits at the top table of luxury spirits. A global fanbase, a storied history of exclusive releases and now a high profile partnership with Aston Martin have put it there.
Our challenge was to create an activation that would bring this iconic brand to life in airports, elevating the brand’s luxury credentials and targeting high net worth whisky fans around the globe.
We were tasked to create a luxury digital experience that would tell the stories behind the spirit, build the prestige of the brand, and forge new connections between traveller and whisky. And all of this in a market where even the most sought after brands have only seconds to turn travellers into shoppers, and shoppers into buyers.
Our work
Marketing Innovation | Creative Strategy | Experiential Design
Client
Beam Suntory GTR Marketing Team
Production Partners
Nakatomi: Physical and Technical design and build
BraveSpark: Video production
An extra layer of complexity
As travel bans and national lockdowns took hold in Q1 2020, airports all over the world closed their doors and an extra layer of complexity was added to our challenge. How would travellers, especially those in the luxury sphere, interact with activations post pandemic? Insights gathered from primary and secondary research told us three key things:
1. In a world where travellers may be less likely to stop and shop, this activation would need to work even harder to stand out from the crowd.
2. We would need to show that any sample offered was safe and free from the chance of contamination.
3. We would need to create a low touch environment and reduce the need for the traveller to interact with retail staff.
Challenge accepted, we got to work.
A design thinking approach
From idea to experience. With a desire to change the way they delivered innovation within their business, we worked with the team at Beam Suntory to design a creative process based on a series of sprints that would fit into their existing annual planning and delivery structure.
Innovation
A team of brand managers, travel retail marketeers, strategists and designers brought together to run a design sprint. Exploring the problem space, developing an initial idea and testing with real whisky loving travellers, all in under a week.
Experience design & pre-production
Exploring the concept, defining the consumer experience and developing blueprint sketches and 3D renders. This definition informed and enabled the selection of production partners.
Content definition & production support
Working alongside the brand team and production partners to define and design the final digital experience. Crafting the visual storytelling and flavour profiling experience whilst feeding into and consulting on the physical design and technical delivery of the unit.
A luxury digital solution
‘A Taste of Bowmore’ – a seven foot tall glass cylinder that uses an interactive 50” translucent OLED screen. Designed to take travellers on a digital journey that tells Bowmore’s stories and matches the users’ flavour preferences to the perfect expression through a series of brand-led questions.
Once matched, crafted copper cylinders rotate and pour the perfect serve into a waiting cup. All that’s left for the shopper to do is verify their age, pull back the screen and reach in to retrieve their sample.
‘A Taste of Bowmore’ is currently live in Heathrow’s terminal five. It will then be heading to China, where it will serve some of the most discerning and tech-savvy luxury consumers in the world, in both Shanghai and Hainan Island – one of the leading luxury travel retail locations on the globe.
“CreateFuture are a creative rocket ship for our team, highly collaborative and fast. They have led us to create some of our most brilliant, engaging and rock solid customer experiences right across our brand portfolio. They push us hard and make us better, but they are still lovely.”
Ed Stening — Global Head of Marketing-Travel Retail, Beam Suntory
Get in touch
We work with global brands, using design thinking to develop new, or improve existing, products and services. Our brand-led approach ensures that they outperform.
If you’re trying to do more with less, get in touch with us to help you get there and leave you in a better place.
