Experiential Marketing in Travel Retail: The Macallan’s Colour Collection Campaign
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, experiential marketing has emerged as a powerful strategy to create memorable, interactive connections between brands and consumers. In the travel retail space, this approach takes on an even greater significance, as it offers an opportunity to engage globetrotters with immersive and interactive experiences. Our recent collaboration with The Macallan, a renowned single malt Scotch whisky producer, showcases how experiential marketing can be successfully deployed in a travel retail context.
The Macallan’s Colour Collection: A Case in Experiential Marketing
The Macallan’s latest launch, the Colour Collection, is more than just a product launch – it’s an immersive experience that tells a story. Our campaign aimed to not only announce this new collection but also educate consumers about its unique narrative, provide an engaging Online-to-Offline (O2O) experience, and through these touchpoints, grow The Macallan Society, the brand’s CRM database.
To accomplish these goals, we created an integrated digital marketing campaign that was both informative and engaging, creating a seamless O2O journey. The campaign included:
Augmented Reality (AR) Experience
Focusing on brand and product education, this immersive technology allowed users to virtually step into The Macallan’s world, exploring the collection’s unique story, and understanding the craftsmanship behind each bottle.
Different AR experiences were created across various touchpoints:
- PR Kit: To unveil the design collaboration with renowned artist David Carson through the initial media push.
- Launch Event Art Gallery: To bring David Carson’s Colour Collection art pieces to life through animation.
- Retail Spaces: To increase brand engagement and product education in travel retail spaces.
“Discover Your Expression”: Engaging Consumers Through Personalisation
This interactive quiz guided users through a series of questions about their taste preferences, ultimately suggesting the most suitable member of the Colour Collection for their palate. This personalised approach not only offered a unique shopping experience but also made the purchasing decision easier and more enjoyable for the customers.
Holistic Global Marketing Strategy
Our comprehensive approach extended beyond the consumer-facing elements to ensure that the experiential marketing components seamlessly connected with the full consumer journey and was effectively amplified to drive traffic to the experiences. We provided The Macallan with a holistic global digital marketing strategy, spanning across various channels, including paid media strategies, KOL partnership strategies, and content strategies.
We also offered guidance on content creation and localisation, ensuring a consistent and compelling narrative across all platforms, while still appealing to the local market’s consumers. This encompassed everything from social media posts and email marketing to the website’s content and design.
Exemplary Results
The campaign’s success testifies to the power of experiential marketing in the travel retail space, resulting in 241K visits to the AR experience and quiz, driving 6,500+ sign-ups to the brand’s CRM database.
The Macallan’s Colour Collection campaign demonstrates how experiential marketing can transform a product launch into an interactive, memorable experience, effectively engaging consumers in the travel retail space. There is great potential for experiential marketing in creating meaningful connections between brands and their customers, and we are thrilled to have been part of this innovative journey with The Macallan.