I love brands with rich storytelling at the core of their identity, so I jumped at the chance to lead brand strategy for Pernod Ricard USA’s champagne portfolio, especially champagne brand Perrier-Jouët. PRUSA’s luxury champagne brand Perrier-Jouët is an icon: Art Nouveau-inspired iconography, traditions dating back to 1811, and deep brand connections with romance, beauty, and nature. This was a gold mine of a brand... but was struggling to drive awareness in demographics key to growth (i.e. younger, more diverse luxury consumers who would love the brand when they found it).
Our opportunity: connect with younger, more diverse luxury consumers with a modern- but still fully authentic- campaign and partnership.
Finding the Right Partner
Sophia Roe was a perfect fit for the brand from the start- a chef and creator connected to the worlds of fashion and beauty with a passion for sustainability and a visually dynamic approach to food and entertaining that blended beautifully with the spirit of Perrier-Jouët.
By connecting on these core values and passions, we leveraged Sophia’s platform and creativity to develop a campaign spanning events, photography, social media, web content, video, and recipes to connect with and move a new customer base.
Bringing A Centuries-Old Brand to New Audiences
At the time, the entire industry was dealing with supply constraints caused by poor harvests in recent years, meaning we had to strike a balance between maximizing impressions and avoiding dead ends for consumers (i.e., stores that would be out of stock).
We made a deliberate choice to go deep rather than wide, by focusing on 3 key markets (NYC, Miami, LA) where cultural impact and profit margin would be strongest.
How the Platform Came to Life
The campaign was built on giving our audiences experiences that were inspiring, educational, and entertaining. Some of these activations included:
- Sensorial Experiences: A series of intimate influencer and press dinners at One Hotel in New York and LA (an existing account partner) hosted by Sophia, combining her dishes with winemaker-led experiences to educate and entertain.
- Campaign Visuals as Art: Art-driven visuals created specifically for the campaign but drawing on Sophia’s own personal style layered with Perrier-Jouët’s aesthetic.
- Recipe Development: Sophia developed recipes for us to feature on our brand site and e-commerce pages, social, and for our events, creating dishes designed to complement and bring out each cuvée’s notes.
- Social Sharing: Sophia shared our content on her platforms, helping to tell the story of how she connects directly with the brand’s values and history.
The campaign platform delivered strong social and digital performance, great press coverage, and helped us to reach our sell-through goals strategically and sustainably. Most importantly, it helped us to tell Perrier-Jouët's story to a new audience in an updated (but still very authentic) way.