GERMANY. L’Occitane’s Provençal Garden has bloomed anew, in the form of another major on-airport promotion at Munich Airport, in conjunction with Gebr Heinemann.
The company’s original Provençal Garden event made its debut at Frankfurt International Airport last September (again in partnership with Gebr Heinemann). The month-long promotion was hailed a stunning success by both the retailer and L’Occitane, not only in terms of sales, but in terms of image, visibility and customer service too.
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L’Occitane’s high-impact, cherry-themed Garden event at Munich maximises the company’s unique French heritage | |
The event at Munich was unveiled on 16 May and will run until 30 June. L’Occitane Regional Director Middle-East & Africa Marc Mansour told The Moodie Report: “Since last year when we had our promotion at Frankfurt Airport, we wanted to repeat it this year in another of our big German airports. Munich is a very important door for us in terms of sales, and also in terms of prime locations. In total we are in six shops there: two in Terminal 2 and four in Terminal 1.”
The company’s new Cherry Blossom range is a key focus of the event, which incorporates a 35sq m promotional site (versus 9sq m in Frankfurt last year). “We have once again created a beautiful Provençal Garden,” confirmed Mansour, “but this year we have added a real cherry tree, to complement our Cherry Blossom range.”
Other new touches include the addition of French music within the promotion area (in Frankfurt last year the company created a soothing cicada soundtrack), and the distribution of 30,000 cherry candies with a customised L’Occitane wrapping, which are being offered to passengers.
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The enticing promotional site draws travellers in from all angles | |
High-quality gwps were an important element of L’Occitane’s original Garden, something Mansour has repeated this year. “We are offering a very nice 500g beach towel, made in the EU, for every purchase of €60 or more,” he noted. “I think it is important nowadays to offer not just innovative but quality items as gwps.
“I also think [the origin] of such products is important, especially for a French brand such as L’Occitane, which is why we have sourced our towels from Europe rather than China.”
Last year Mansour was coy about his Garden’s objectives, explaining at the time: “We did not really quantify our targets in advance, as this is our first such promotion with Gebr Heinemann. But it was never just about increasing sales. We wanted to promote our image, and inform customers about our unique heritage.”
“We are very happy to be working again with Gebr Heinemann, as they have always believed in our brand and given us maximum help and support“ |
Marc Mansour, L’Occitane |
This year he declared: “Our key objective is once again to promote our young brand in travel retail and of course to increase considerably our turnover at Munich Airport in order to show everyone that L’Occitane is now a major brand in travel retail, and that we can do things as well as, and sometimes better than, much bigger brands.”
Gebr Heinemann’s support has, of course, been instrumental in this regard, most notably for offering L’Occitane – which is not one of its biggest brands in turnover terms – the opportunity to show what it can do.
“We are very happy to be working again with Gebr Heinemann, as they have always believed in our brand and given us maximum help and support,” acknowledged Mansour. “That is one of the main reasons why we have done these two big promotions with them.”
And it looks like being another win-win-win situation, for L’Occitane, the retailer – and the customer. “This is a bigger event than at Frankfurt, both in terms of space and duration,” concluded Mansour. “We will have to wait until the end of the event to know whether it has been better, but the initial sales results are very, very good.”
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