odyssey
od·ys·sey | ˈä-də-sē
an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest – an odyssey of self-discovery; a spiritual odyssey from disbelief to faith – Merriam Webster
Introduction – Moët Hennessy has embarked on a series of high-profile promotional engagements for Hennessy X.O Cognac across selected Asian airports. The X.O Odyssey campaign supports – and is inspired by – the world’s leading Cognac brand’s new X.O global advertising campaign, ‘The Seven Worlds,’ based on a short film directed by renowned film director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, The Martian).
The Moodie Davitt Report is exclusively covering the campaign roll-out, which began at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) and Singapore Changi Airport in May, and at Incheon International Airport at the beginning of this month before being introduced in coming weeks at other major Asian gateways. Martin Moodie examines the project and talks to Moët Hennessy Global Travel Retail President Laurent Boidevezi about the ambitions that underpin it.
Stark, brooding background music. White credits on a black screen. Hennessy presents… A Ridley Scott Film. Welcome to the multi-sensorial world of the acclaimed British film director as his latest and most surprising production plays out to audiences around the globe. Welcome, in fact, to The Seven Worlds – a short film which visualises the ‘odyssey’ experienced in every sip of Hennessy X.O Cognac.
Fans of the director will recognise his trademark touches. The intense, eerie score (by Daniel Pemberton); rich, sumptuous imagery; big sweeping visuals; shimmering gold swirls; bronzed giants; androids brought to life; lush woodlands stirred by invisible spirits.
[Prepare to enter The Seven Worlds of Hennessy X.O and of Ridley Scott.]
All of those elements combine in a startlingly powerful four-minute creative interpretation of the seven unique Hennessy X.O tasting notes identified by the Cognac maison’s Comité de Dégustation – Sweet Notes, Rising Heat, Spicy Edge, Flowing Flame, Chocolate Lull, Wood Crunches; and Infinite Echo.
The film, which was premiered on 11 February, has already generated almost 9 million page views on YouTube alone (a shortened version has attracted a further 5.5 million). Now, an ambitious X.O Odyssey in-store campaign, which echoes the Ridley Scott film, is being rolled out across some of Asia Pacific’s leading airports. Mirroring the film, the campaign focuses on the seven tasting notes and reimagines and visualises them as seven worlds.
Each individual airport promotion aims to deliver an immersive experience designed to take consumers on a journey through a world of the seven tasting notes. Each airport location will focus on one of those notes, while Hong Kong International and Changi airports is each offering X.O bottles with their own exclusive sleeves.
The Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) activation, launched on 10 May in association with retailer Duty Zero by cdf (a joint venture between China Duty Free Group and Lagardère Travel Retail), is the biggest activation, benefiting from the presence of the acclaimed House of Hennessy boutique at the airport.
Its theme is ‘Chocolate Lull’. The consumer engagement includes an immersive room within the boutique where the full-length Ridley Scott film is played on a big digital screen. The cinema feel is accentuated by a popcorn machine and chairs from where consumers can watch the movie. A merchandising unit allows customers to experience a chocolate aroma and a 3D printer prints out a real piece of chocolate in the shape of the Hennessy ‘H’. A tasting unit offers chocolate to complement Hennessy X.O.
An exclusive packaging sleeve features the Chocolate Lull tasting note and reference to the HKIA exclusivity. Chocolate pairing workshops on 6 and 7 June were led by renowned chocolate expert Katie Chan (affectionately known as ‘the Chocolate Lady’ in Hong Kong), offering tastings of X.O and complementary chocolate flavours targeted at travellers.
To drive footfall, Brand Ambassadors dressed in Hennessy and chocolate colours encourage travellers to visit the House of Hennessy.
Flowing Flame at Changi Airport
The activation at Changi Airport (where DFS is the spirits and wine retailer), which launched on 8 May, is themed around another tasting note – ‘Flowing Flame’. The product and experiential engagement are delivered from dedicated merchandising units, while iPads show the Flowing Flame chapter from the Ridley Scott film.
A panel on one side of a merchandising unit allows customers to place their hands on it and experience a real heat sensation. As in HKIA, an airport exclusive packaging sleeve is featured, this time with the ‘Flowing Flame’ tasting note exclusive to Changi [we’ll bring you more details and images from the Changi promotion soon].
The heat goes on at Incheon International Airport
In the first week of June, another Hennessy shop-in-shop engagement began, this time at Lotte Duty Free’s stand-alone boutique at Incheon International Airport Terminal 2 [look out for our extensive coverage in coming weeks].
The Incheon tasting note theme is ‘Rising Heat’. Once more, experiential features include a big screen and an iPad playing the Ridley Scott film.
Product tastings are being featured throughout the activation period. For two days at the end of June a bartender will support the tastings while a sand artist will give edible sand art performances in a direct echoing of the sands of the desert context for the Rising Heat chapter in the film. A non-exclusive packaging sleeve features the Rising Heat theme.
Question and answer with Moët Hennessy Global Travel Retail President Laurent Boidevezi
“Each time you taste Hennessy X.O you go on a journey,” says Laurent Boidevezi as he talks to The Moodie Davitt Report at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, two glasses of Hennessy X.O ready in front of us as if to emphasise the point.
“Each drop is noticed by itself. With The Seven Worlds campaign, we wanted to partner with top creative people and ask them to develop their own interpretation of this odyssey world, this odyssey drop, and that is what Sir Ridley Scott [he was knighted in 2003 for his services to the British film industry -Ed] has done.
“He was actually very intrigued by the Hennessy complexity, the Hennessy world, the Hennessy maison, and that’s what he accepted to reinterpret in a very creative way – this odyssey – by designing The Seven Worlds. The movie says that each drop of Hennessy will bring you towards a very specific flavour. It’s super-artistic, and portrays the seven notes, the seven worlds, in a very creative way.
“I was lucky enough to be with Ridley Scott, who very kindly came to Paris, where we did a small presentation of the campaign,” Boidevezi recollects. “He’s a remarkable artist. With Hennessy we try always to raise the bar and from a creativity standpoint, this is really amazing. His own views on Hennessy are very poetic.”
Moët Hennessy has multiple ambitions for this campaign, Boidevezi points out, that are not only designed to touch existing Hennessy devotees. “The beauty is that it allows us to touch a different crop above and beyond the Hennessy lovers,” he says. “So, for example, we have had a remarkable engagement with people who are into cinema and art because, after all, the Ridley Scott film is a piece of art. It was a nice way to engage with people beyond the Hennessy drinker, who may not have been engaged by Hennessy in the past. A younger crowd as well.”
“You always need to be true to who you are, to what we call our DNA. But you need to still remain extremely contemporaneous – fresh, exciting and desirable for a younger crowd.”
The beauty of the campaign – and also part of its challenge – is the way it seeks to translate such a poetic and creative working into something “business-actionable”, says Boidevezi. “The whole idea is to have this extremely inspirational, desirable campaign, and then link it with some business drivers,” he points out.
Cue the extensive in-store activities at key Asian airports. Each location sees the relating of a chapter – for example, Chocolate Lull in Hong Kong – which is played out via an immersive, multi-sensorial consumer experience. “It obviously goes way beyond just having this excellent product on a shelf,” says Boidevezi. “You can experiment with Chocolate Lull. We have been partnering with a master of chocolate to create a very interesting sensorial experience at Hong Kong Airport.”
At Changi, the focus is also on what Boidevezi calls “edutainment”, this time featuring the Flowing Flame. “What we like about this campaign is that it’s spot on in terms of what the consumer wants. They want to understand what Hennessy stands for and they want to learn more, but in a fun way. This platform allows us to do some edutainment in the stores and to craft experiences at the point-of-sale.”
Ridley Scott’s The Seven Worlds is being broadcast globally across various social and digital media platforms with its message sub-titled in key languages such as Mandarin. “It is being played all over the world and the numbers of views is something that has never been seen in the spirits industry,” comments Boidevezi. “It was pre-released on social media and the level of engagement is what you find with the top perfume campaigns, for example. And I am talking the really top one ones. So it’s quite remarkable for Hennessy.
[The short version of the Ridley Scott film has generated over 5.5 million views on YouTube.]
“It’s a nice combination. There is Ridley Scott and there is Hennessy. It’s balanced between a mythical product, which dates back to 1765 and which has not changed, with an interpretation that is evolving. It’s all about what you feel when you taste greatness, which is captured in this odyssey and through these different worlds. So it’s Hennessy’s heritage combined with Sir Ridley Scott’s amazing creative mind. Together, that gives us something remarkable.”
Travel retail as a grand stage
Travel retail is pivotal not only to The Seven Worlds campaign but to Hennessy in general, says Boidevezi. “At Hennessy, we recognise that travel retail goes well beyond being a key commercial channel. It’s an amazing platform to build brand visibility in front of affluent consumers. And this is why urging top airports to showcase this campaign is an extremely efficient way to build our brand and to build the excitement behind Hennessy in front of the consumer.”
That brand-building, and the related excitement, has found its ultimate expression to date in the House of Hennessy boutique at HKIA (pictured below).
“We are very happy about it,” says Boidevezi. “We first [soft] opened the space in June 2018 and then we did a full opening event for the boutique last September. It has brought outstanding results and great learnings about consumers. We have direct interaction with consumers, and in terms of image-building it’s clearly an amazing statement.
“The idea is not to stop there. This is a milestone for this amazing maison. This year is a very rich year for Hennessy. We are about to become the biggest in-retail sales spirit brand in the world. Hennessy has been on a fantastic ride for the last couple of years and we still have amazing potential.”
While volume growth is important, it is qualitative growth that matters most, Boidevezi insists. “At the end of the day, it is luxury and it’s about having a patrimonial approach. What really matters is what we are doing for the future. I often say to my team that we might spend 5, 10, 20 or even 30 years with Hennessy. We have to ask ourselves what have we done through that journey to make Hennessy as a maison stronger and more desirable, not only now but for the next 50 to 100 years?
“This maison is over 250 years old so it’s a huge responsibility. Everything we do, we want to do right. We are not in a short-term game maximising something for 18 months. It’s for the long run and execution is critical.
“This campaign has long legs. We do not launch a campaign with Ridley Scott – or with anyone else – every year. Something that’s very different with Hennessy than with other players is the fact that we have time. We are not in a rush to say, ‘Let’s do it.’ We are really focusing on executing this campaign extremely well in the field with our retail partners the best way we can.”
HKIA, Changi and Incheon – Hennessy’s location choices for the first three engagements – are very different airports but they share a commonality in terms of the importance of Chinese travellers, who are “absolutely critical” to the business, Boidevezi acknowledges. “Are we targeting only PRC customers? No. Do we always need to make Hennessy more relevant, more desirable with the Chinese and with X.O in particular? Of course.”
Hennessy is not only trying to straddle nationalities but age demographics. In that context it faces the perennial task of any major brand trying to lure a new audience while not alienating its traditional one. “That’s the paradox that we need to answer on a daily basis,” says Boidevezi. “This is our challenge and the challenge of the luxury goods industry. You always need to be true to who you are, to what we call our DNA. But you need to still remain extremely contemporaneous – fresh, exciting and desirable for a younger crowd.”
How to achieve that elusive balance? “There is no recipe, but… you need to have this L’air du temps [fashionability] and while capturing that, still be true to yourself,” replies Boidevezi. In 2018, Hennessy did precisely that with the successful launch of X.O. Limited in associated with renowned industrial designer Marc Newson, which featured a stripped-back bottle with rippling ridges.
“As with Ridley Scott, that was a way of bringing modernity, while partnering with KOLs on this new campaign will bring something additional,” Boidevezi says. “You need to be both ambitious and cautious at the same time. It’s a paradox, a tension, how far you want to go. And anything you do in terms of limited editions and exclusive products needs to reinforce the master brand. If you do something which is too technical, you fail. It could even be a commercial success but it’s not bringing the right equity to the brand.”
Craft heritage long before craft boom
Asked about the growing impact of so-called craft spirits on the traditional drinks sector, Boidevezi replies simply, “We are a craft spirit.” He emphasises the artisan nature of creating great Cognac, from the terroir to the grape growing through distilling through aging.
“I often say to my team that it’s very good to be looking at the stars, but it’s also very important to keep the balance by having two feet in the vineyards. For Hennessy as with our Champagnes, it all starts with grapes and that’s why we need to be extremely humble in front of mother nature.”
Travel retail, says Boidevezi, allows an outstanding opportunity to display that craft and that heritage. “A few years ago we were simply selling [in airport retail]. Now we are engaging in a dialogue. If you’re just commercial, and if your brand is hot, then consumers pick up a bottle and go. But that’s not enough, that’s not our aim. Through our space, we want to engage in conversation and bring them into our world, while at the same time wanting to know more about them. It’s not one-way, it’s much, much richer than that.
“Travel retail is really an amazing platform where you can tell stories to consumers. For wine and spirits, there are not that many [local market] retailers of the scale that you see in such airports where you can showcase in this way and offer great experiences to consumers. The number of consumers we are touching is very high, and it’s a high-quality, high-image channel. Where else would you have such a mix of nationalities and cultures during the same day? That’s a very important idea for all of us to think about, which goes above and beyond commercialism.”
So much so that Boidevezi says he has exciting plans to create something “entirely experimental, entirely cultural, and entirely non-commercial” within the channel in the future. “I want to deliver a cultural happening at an airport,” he comments. Plans are still being drafted, he says, but it’s clear that like the Odyssey presented in The Seven Worlds, the journey continues.
