This year, The Luxury Collection announced its first-ever epicurean Global Explorer — Laila Gohar. We partnered with Laila to create a barware line inspired by our hotels and destinations. This custom, destination-inspired barware line combines two of The Luxury Collection’s brand pillars — epicurean journeys and transformational travel, showcasing the unique experiences at each of these destinations through Laila’s lens.
When it came time to share a coupe and embroidered napkin inspired by Prince de Galles, Paris, we partnered with Laila to create a one-of-a-kind announcement — an immersive confectionery experience at the hotel, just in time for Paris Fashion Week.
Our objectives for this content:
A chef and artist known for her avant-garde culinary installations, we partnered with Laila Gohar to create a surrealist cake installation at Prince de Galles, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Paris. Featuring three large cakes measuring an impressive 8 to 10 feet tall, the display was inspired by the hotel’s art deco design and paid homage to the art of French patisserie.
To encourage the most buzz, we held an event during the start of Paris Fashion Week to celebrate our partnership with Laila and display the installation along with the coupe and napkin, inviting over 80 individuals from press to influencers, and other tastemakers in art and culture to attend. During the event, Laila cut into one of the cakes, delighting attendees who assumed the installation was an inedible sculpture. Throughout the evening, champagne was served in Laila’s custom-designed coupe, and a matching cake-inspired candle, also designed exclusively for The Luxury Collection, was on display and given as a gift upon departure.
Working in collaboration with pastry designer Hebe Konditori and the hotel’s lead pastry chef, Laila created miniature edible versions of the cake to be paired with champagne served in Laila’s coupe, available for purchase at the Prince de Galles’s “Bar 19.20” through the end of the year and thereby extending the life of this activation.
We didn’t stop at curating the event and on-site experiences, however. We made sure to extend our content to engage non-attendees by means of a behind-the-scenes video, a Guide to Paris curated by Laila, and further social content, increasing excitement and interest in the partnership beyond the event.
To share this experience with our digital audience, we created a behind-the-scenes video of the installation coming to life at the hotel, concluding with footage from the event. From sunrise to soirée, the video gives an inside look at the special day.
We asked Laila for a list of her favorite spots around the city with explanations as to why she recommends each location, curating a Guide to Paris for theluxurycollection.com. This guide allows our audience to discover new and unexpected locations to add to their own Paris travel plans.
The event was widely shared by influential attendees through Instagram Stories, many of which were reposted on our own Instagram. We posted short-form “moving portrait” videos and photos during and after the event to share the experience with our audience. Laila also shared content from the event to her own social channels, garnering earned exposure and excitement for The Luxury Collection among her audience.
From product conceptualization to event execution, this partnership was an incredible success, exceeding live-activation benchmarks for The Luxury Collection.
Through interactions from notable guests and Laila’s own posts, we had an earned reach of 32.9M OTS, with over 97% of attendees sharing organically — speaking to the authentic excitement around this activation. Interest also continued past the activation, with mentions and tags continuing in the weeks following the event.
On social and digital channels, we saw an impressive response with 3.6M views and 192.4K engagements. This 7.7% engagement rate is 2.3x higher than our average for the year, indicating our audience’s interest in this partnership and activation. Our videos also had a 10.6% average view-through rate (75% completion), further demonstrating our audience's engagement with the content.
As a result of this immersive partnership and the strategic execution of consumer touchpoints, we engaged elevated media at multiple stages, garnering more than 108M impressions from notable press like Town & Country, New York Magazine’s “The Strategist” column, FLAUNT, L’Officiel and more.
