Moet Hennessy Australia, one of the world’s leading luxury champagne, wine and spirit brands, has partnered with leading point of sale and retail merchandising company EDA Australasia (EDA) to promote sales of its premium cognac range, and educate shoppers through a new point of sale (POS) approach.
Moet Hennessy challenged EDA to bring a ‘touch of luxury’ to its new premium cognac displays by designing and installing POS units in key independent liquor stores in New South Wales and Victoria. The units were also required to showcase the Hennessy premium cognac products including Very Special Old Pale, XO, Paradis, Paradis Imperial and Richard Hennessy.
The project began with both companies conducting field research into Hennessy’s customers to discover key shopper insights to assist with design decisions, as discussed by Trade Marketing Manager at Moët Hennessy, Siegfrid Bacani.
“Cognac is a category that is not well understood by Australian consumers, so we focused our attention on loyal customers who already have a good understanding of the category. Our consumers tend to live outside the main metropolitan areas of New South Wales and Victoria, which allowed us to focus on specific retail stores in these areas that drive a significant volume of sales for the brand,” said Mr Bacani.
Business Development Manager at EDA Australasia, Gary Parsons, worked with Hennessy to create an effective POS solution to educate shoppers on the premium products available in the Hennessy cognac range.
“Drawing on our extensive knowledge and research into consumer buying behaviours, we designed the new POS units to reinforce Hennessy’s brand equity and encourage upsell to the premium product range. We achieved this by developing tailor-made Hennessy-branded prestige POS units to suit the traditional Australian liquor store environment, while staying true to Hennessy’s strict brand guidelines.”
“To bring a touch of luxury to the units we introduced premium materials and strategic lighting to showcase the range of products in the Hennessy brand. For example, we used a combination of Hennessy-designed aluminum laminates, mirrored and matte, screen-printed Hennessy lattice logos, polished acrylic feature displays, LED lighting to spotlight products and lumi-panel shelves to offset display bottles,” said Mr Parsons.
Both EDA and Hennessy agreed on the creative and strategic concept vision to bring to life the Hennessy brand in Australia, which made the partnership a success.
“What impressed me most was EDA’s depth of knowledge in the luxury brands industry, along with EDA’s commitment to delivering an outstanding total solution from the proactive consultation with our retailers, various design evolutions and the procurement of some fairly difficult to obtain technical materials,” said Mr Bacani.
“EDA has been able to interpret the ambitious and directive guidelines from the Hennessy ‘maison’ in France and translate this brief into a locally relevant Australian context. EDA also effectively managed the project delivery on time and within budget, producing a quality POS solution.”
“Based on this experience we are currently looking at innovating some exciting new POS displays and, as one of our preferred partners, EDA will be a key part of this process,” added Mr Bacani.
The new cognac units have been in-store since February 2015 and have already seen strong results for both Hennessy and the retailers. The units now showcase and highlight the different options in the cognac range as well as developing shoppers’ understanding of V.S.O.P and X.O cognac.