UK. Lagardère Travel Retail has teamed up with Estée Lauder brand Clinique for a surprise Trinity gifting initiative at London Luton Airport to celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March). The Moodie Davitt Report visited the airport yesterday to experience the activation first-hand.
Passengers who arrived at the airport on domestic flights on 7 and 8 March received a Clinique gift bag on the luggage carousel. The bag contained Clinique’s new Moisture Surge 72-Hour Auto-Replenishing Hydrator (50ml), Moisture Surge Face Spray (125ml), a Clinique luggage tag and a -15% discount coupon for pre-order purchase at Aelia Duty Free.
The Estée Lauder Companies Global President Travel Retail and Retail Development Olivier Bottrie hailed the Trinity partnership. “For Clinique’s International Women’s Day activation, our aim is to surprise and celebrate our consumers. Over 22 million women around the world choose Clinique for their moisturiser, so building an experiential moment where we could give back to the customer and ensure they arrive happy and hydrated, creates not only a memorable brand connection, but engages the traveller with the joys of shopping in duty free,” he said.
“To create these types of delightful activations truly requires great partnership on the part of brand, retailer and airport, and we were proud to partner with Lagardère Travel Retail and London Luton Airport to bring this experience to life.”
The disruptive International Women’s Day activation, created exclusively for London Luton Airport in partnership with Aelia Duty Free, kicks off a series of initiatives.
From 8 March to 7 April prominent Clinique visuals are featuring across Arrivals and Departures at the airport. These aim to engage consumers throughout their journey to “travel hydrated with Clinique”.
On 29 to 30 March (Easter weekend), passengers in international Departures will receive vouchers from Clinique hostesses to redeem samples of Moisture Surge 72-Hour Auto-Replenishing Hydrator at the Aelia Duty Free Clinique counter.
To promote the animation, Lagardère Travel Retail partnered with influencers Sonja Kovac and Freddy Cousin Brown. The pair, well-known in the UK for their beauty blogging, arrived at London Luton Airport on a flight from Edinburgh yesterday. Their arrival at the luggage carousel was documented across their social channels.
Thinking outside the box
Speaking at London Luton Airport yesterday, Lagardère Travel Retail Chief Business Officer Ambroise Fondeur explained the inspiration behind the animation.
“We wanted to find new ways to surprise customers and make travel shopping unique. The biggest idea was how to create something special around International Women’s Day. We discussed it with Luton and they were excited straight away. We do similar events but never to this scale and to make these things work we need all three parties to work together.”
He added: “As a travel retailer we need to destandardise travel retail so that the channel is different from what customers see elsewhere. This is the biggest event we will have this year but we will have others to differentiate travel shopping from the rest.”
Lagardère Travel Retail Managing Director UK & Ireland Amaury Dehen said that London Luton Airport was a top location choice for the activation because of its “outside the box thinking”.
“The airport transformation was one key element but we needed a progressive airport,” he noted. “This kind of event is not easy, it’s a lot of work for all parties and that was made possible because of London Luton’s progressive thinking.”
From the airport’s standpoint, the promotion fits neatly with its current transformation [Luton Airport is nearing the end of a £110 million upgrade which includes retail, car parking, lounges and security – Ed]. “In the transformation we’re going through at the minute, there is a huge focus on customer experience. The opportunity to give people a really memorable experience was too good for us to not work closely with Lagardère,” said London Luton Airport Chief Commercial Officer Jonathan Pollard.
“This kind of event is not easy, it’s a lot of work for all parties and that was made possible because of London Luton’s progressive thinking” – Lagardère Travel Retail Managing Director UK & Ireland Amaury Dehen
Pollard added: “The fact that the animation is in a secure environment has presented some challenges but it really is something that people will remember and a first-of-a-kind.”
Pollard said that the ‘surprise and delight’ element is a theme that echoes throughout the Aelia Duty Free retail space which opened in July 2016. He hinted that similar Trinity collaborations could be in the pipeline.
“We’re already very confident that this initiative is a complete success. I know when we see the customers’ faces that they will be surprised and delighted so I would say this is the first of many [activations]. It’s about building this activation into a normal process of going through an airport.”
Until recently, London Luton’s primary focus has been on passenger growth. But this year the airport is turning its attention to customer experience. “Only three years ago we had 10 million passengers a year through Luton Airport. We’re now up to 15.8 million and will deliver 16.8 million this year,” noted Pollard.
“The Trinity is evolving and this is a testimony of what we can do” – Lagardère Travel Retail Chief Business Officer Ambroise Fondeur
“Our three-year plan is about improving customer experience and we want to position this airport as one where people really remember their experience. The calibre of the [Women’s Day] activity here is perfectly aligned with our own internal objectives.
“Aviation has sometimes lost a bit of its fun so our objective is to move away from that monotony of everyday travel.”
“We want to position this airport as one where people really remember their experience” – London Luton Airport Chief Commercial Officer Jonathan Pollard
London Luton Airport Head of Commercial Development Mark Jennings added that the campaign is the airport’s biggest single brand activation. “I’ve never seen innovation that has taken a piece of airport or infrastructure and made it into something dynamic.”
Trinity concept’s evolution
Fondeur emphasised the importance of the Trinity concept in facilitating such events but noted the model is still developing. “Without Trinity this [event] cannot happen. I think that over time each party is understanding more that Trinity is an ecosystem. We need cooperation from all three parties for this ecosystem to be successful.
“We started discussions with Luton in December so when you see the scale of what this activation involves, it’s been very quick. The Trinity is evolving and this is a testimony of what we can do but it’s a slow and evolving process.”
Passenger interaction on social media #travelclinique #internationalwomensday
