Title | SCENTS OF THE CITY |
Brand | THALYS TRAIN NETWORK |
Product/Service | THALYS HIGH-SPEED RAIL TRAVEL |
Category |
D05. Sculptural Brand Installation & Experience |
Entrant
|
ROSAPARK Paris, FRANCE
|
Idea Creation
|
ROSAPARK Paris, FRANCE
|
Production
|
BIRTH Paris, FRANCE
|
Additional Company
|
L'ASSOCIE PARIS, FRANCE
|
Credits
Jean-Francois Sacco |
ROSAPARK |
Co-founder Chief Creative Officer |
Gilles Fichteberg |
ROSAPARK |
Co-founder Chief Creative Officer |
Jean-Patrick Chiquiar |
ROSAPARK |
Co-founder |
Jamie Standen |
ROSAPARK |
Creative Director |
Mark Forgan |
ROSAPARK |
Creative Director |
Delphine Drutel |
ROSAPARK |
General Manager |
Vincent Rodella |
BIRTH |
Director |
Blanche Depondt |
ROSAPARK |
Art Director |
Soraya Cotton |
ROSAPARK |
Account Director |
Camille Hemet |
ROSAPARK |
Account Manager |
Mickael Mougenot |
ROSAPARK |
Head of Amplification |
Hugo Legrand |
BIRTH |
Executive Producer |
Tristan Beraud |
BIRTH |
Executive Producer |
Pauline Germain |
ROSAPARK |
PR Co-ordinator |
Theda Braddock |
ROSAPARK |
PR Co-ordinator |
Gilles Rivollier |
L'ASSOCIE |
Production Designer |
Leonard Marchal |
DROM INTERNATIONAL |
Lab consultant |
Elisabeth Carre |
NOSE CONSULTING |
Perfume designer |
Laetitia Deville |
THALYS |
Brand and Communication Manager |
The Campaign
The idea was to create a travel agency with a twist. Instead of choosing your destination through Tripadvisor, or by looking at images, or by asking your friends on Facebook, you would choose your destination via one simple filter: scent.
Creative Execution
We researched hundreds of iconic scents from the destinations on the Thalys network and incorporated them into a temporary travel agency. The scents, created by Drom Laboratory in Paris, were soaked into beads that were housed in 752 unique metal tubes. Each tube had a number on it, which corresponded to a destination on one of four maps of Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam and Brussels. People could interact with the installation, find the scents that they liked, and then go to the maps and discover which cities and destinations the scents corresponded with. The scents ranged from ‘cut grass’ to promote the FC Koln football stadium in Cologne, to ‘latex’ to promote the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam, to ‘fresh baguette’ to promote the up and coming east district in Paris. Hosts were onsite to help people book promotional tickets.
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market
The travel agency launched in April in Paris and travelled to Brussels in May. Journalists and influencers were invited to the events, and the travel agency was open to passers-by. Thousands of potential travellers dropped in to try out the travel boutique. After the disastrous years of 2015 and 2016, reservations are trending upwards again, and more and more tourists are taking Thalys trains to enjoy the unique scents of Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam.
The travel business most often uses images to motivate people to buy tickets and travel. But in recent times, the image of European destinations has been hijacked by danger and negativity. Terrorist attacks, real and imagined. Our strategy was to bypass images altogether and employ a sense perhaps even more evocative: scent.