Window Shopping

Aesop's shop windows are always great to look through.

But this spring in New York City they are great to look at.

All of Aesop’s stores around town recently started showingcasing large-scale hand painted illustrations of magnolias to mark the launch of a new fragrance, Aurner.

Some also have catch-copy that reads "A different bloom" connecting them to the new product whose signature ingredient is Magnolia Leaf.

Who is the audience for this experience?

Aesop locates its stand-alone signature stores in neighborhoods where their buyers live or frequent. Think Soho, Hudson Yards, Nomad, Gansevoort and so forth. It is a place-specific approach, that includes cultural and architectural fit.

The primary audience is shop-passers. Since far more people pass a given store in a given week (tens of thousands in some locations) relative to those that go in (hundreds) this tactic makes sense as a way to connect more.

The windows are one of Aesop’s “owned media channels” so to speak, amplifying what is going on inside, outside.

How did they deliver it?

Aesop partnered with a small shop based in Hoboken, NJ, called Mural Painters Inc. to make them.

The murals seemed to appear everywhere all at once. Delivering this brief must have been quite a challenge for MPI. But they did a great job with consistent quality across the several storefronts where I experienced this activation.

I spoke with a shop attendant in the Nolita store (pictured) who told me that the metallic colored paint was a deliberate design choice, because there are “hints of metallic” in the new fragrance.

He also told me that the strategy is working, and that plenty of people were coming into the shop just to ask about the murals. He said he used the opportunity to give each of them a fragrance strip with the new product, and a mini consultation.

This is exactly how it is supposed to work. The visual merchandizing people and customer facing people working together to create a model experience.