Providing the full luxury brand experience
Dual language creative execution targeting wealthy Chinese market
Farhad Koodoruth’s ‘Think BR’ piece (http://bit.ly/Ps9oWW) ‘Where is the market for luxury brands?’ yesterday tapped into a subject that’s dear to our hearts at JCDecaux Airport. He asks, ‘Where are these big spenders? And how do you reach them?’. We believe that we can give a very good account of ourselves in answer to both these questions.Wherever else the luxury consumer can be reached – and of course they are, as Farhad amply demonstrates, reached through clever online targeting techniques – they are also at the airport, and like the other audience sector in which we excel, the business traveller, the luxury consumer is at the airport on a regular basis.
Airport media delivers affluent, engaged travellers with high levels of disposable income. 50% of JCDecaux Airport business travellers earn £100,000 plus, and 27% of them have at some point bought a watch or jewellery at the airport. In fact 8.5million JCDecaux Airport passengers bought luxury goods in the airport in the past year alone; Mintel says that 9% of all money spent on luxury and designer brands was spent at the airport. Our global research project Airport Stories highlighted this as a worldwide phenomenon, with comments such as “I purchase luxury brands, I just feel like having them in the airport” coming to the fore. So we know that the right people to spend on luxury are in the airport environment, and that they are inclined to make purchases while they are there.
Airport media also provides direct access to Chinese consumers, who according to BAA Heathrow, make up less than 2% of passengers but over 6% of duty free sales. This luxury-loving consumer sector is truly exciting for us and we have seen advertisers target them specifically with very clever use of our media. For example, Estee Lauder ran Chinese language creative executions for Bobbi Brown on digital screens at times when passengers for Chinese flights were arriving at the airport and waiting in the Departure lounges (the rest of the time the ad showed in English). The same brand also features Chinese language copy alongside English on its stunning Number 1 Fifth Avenue site in Terminal Five in the heart of the shopping experience, directly in front of World Duty Free.
The airport environment provides both information (through the advertising) and the chance to experience the product in person, as well as a route to make the final decision and purchase (through the range of high-end retail outlets found in the International Departure Lounge). This is very important: a luxury market analysis commissioned for JCDecaux Airport through Bournemouth University found that while 75% of luxury purchasers do rely on internet investigation before purchasing a luxury good, a range of sensory experiences are important for luxury goods consumption, which cannot be delivered online alone.
