April 15, 2011
French fashion house Louis Vuitton is displaying its ready-to-wear, accessories, jewelry and watches and rolling out a pop-up store in Cannes during the 64th annual International Film Festival in May.
Louis Vuitton will open a pop-up store opposite its boutique on the Croisette in Cannes in the South of France. This pop-up store reinforces the relationship that the luxury brand has with the city of Cannes while paying homage to the world of cinema.
"Louis Vuitton's Cannes pop-up seizes the moment at the iconic Cannes Film Festival,” said Paul Farkas, founder/CEO of Social.TV and SocialFashion.com, New York. “Beyond time and place, focus on evening gowns and accessories contextually optimizes the who's who in attendance along its own branded red-carpet events.
“Consumers will want to take part and purchase as part of the festival-related event, rather than seeing the store just as a retail point-of-sale,” he said.
Louis Vuitton did not respond by press deadline. Mr. Farkas is not affiliated with Louis Vuitton and agreed to comment as a third-party industry expert.
Pop stop
The luxury brand is marketing the pop-up store to consumers via its Facebook page and Twitter handle.
Louis Vuitton's Facebook announcement
For example, Louis Vuitton gave a sneak preview of the retail store on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Louis Vuitton's tweet
Louis Vuitton will unveil a selection of ready-to-wear, leather goods and accessories from the collections designed by Marc Jacobs, artistic director of Louis Vuitton.
The new retail space will host the evening prêt-a-porter collections, “Cocktail party by the pool,” “Iconic Evening” and “Evening Grand Soir,” as well as accessories, jewelry and watches.
Additionally, the pop-up store will have a catwalk-like passageway for consumers to walk through the various aspects of the Louis Vuitton world.
A garden courtyard will conclude the Louis Vuitton pop-up store and there will be a lounge area where the most beautiful watch and jewelry pieces will be displayed.
"While luxury brands are always passionate and patriotic in paying homage to their base of origin, it would be nice to see the brand branch out and keep the pop-up tradition along the film festival circuit as each major stop offers respective who's who bases amidst respective A-list gala and paparazzi backdrops,” Mr. Farkas said.
Film installations will be presented in the store as the Wong Kar Wai’s film “In the mood for love.”
Reel deal
This is not the first time that Louis Vuitton has experimented with film.
For example, the brand engaged consumers and drove traffic to its Web site with a vivid and cinematic video advertisement that the brand placed before certain television programming on the video-streaming site Hulu (see story).
The Louis Vuitton pop-up store is a creative way to engage film festival-goers, drive consumers in-store and push sales.
Mr. Farkas believes that pop-up communication will be the next foray in digital communications.
“Like we see now with dynamic network and brand overlays intermittently claiming much of TV screen real estate, next we will see augmented addressable and geosocial overlaid messages in the out-of-home environment,” Mr. Farkas said. “The post-digital era will be marked as all about geolocation, geolocation, geolocation."
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