Milan Design Week 2024
Gaggenau x Lime PR
Expertise
Global comms strategyMedia relations
Press launch event
Influencer and KOL outreach
The brief
Following the success of Gaggenau’s 2022 Milan Design activation, the pressure was on for 2024. The challenges for the PR team were numerous: same venue, similar attendees, so how do you make a noise? Gaggenau would be unveiling a new installation and new designs for their ovens and cooling ranges, but, it was such a highly sensitive reveal that all details and imagery were embargoed until they opened the doors to the public.
Expertise
Global comms strategyMedia relations
Press launch event
Influencer and KOL outreach
Our answer
Having convinced the client for the need to raise awareness before the event, we set about ensuring the Press’s appetite was whetted. Busy influencers and important KOLs needed to feel compelled not to miss out. So the ambitious Lime PR team convinced Gaggenau to invest in a Virtual Press Live Roundtable, well ahead of Design Week. The great and the good of Gaggenau were gathered in a forum at the Milan venue, with Designer Sophie Ashby as host. Videos, featuring Chef Daniel Humm, played in between the virtual Q&A with journalists and editors of the major publications. There were plenty of hints that there would be a big reveal in Milan, as for the first time we were executing the new brand positioning ‘for those who know’. Gaggenau marketing teams from different countries such as Turkey invited Architects & Designers, Press and KOLs to their showroom to watch and take part.
The aim of the virtual event was threefold: build anticipation, put Gaggenau in the reporters’ and editors’ minds and calendars and finally to give long lead print media content that they would have time to publish in time for Design editions.
The results were worth it, with over 70 editors and journalists attending virtually and over 18 articles and features online and in print (worth €163,000 in advertising value equivalency) pre-event, which is something the brand had never achieved before while showcasing at Milan Design Week. But its true success wouldn’t be fully known until Design Week and the attendance figures came in.
The main event
The first day of Milan Design Week is traditionally Press Day and Lime PR exceeded the KPI by ushering in over 150 attendees and plied them with something refreshing while they enjoyed a supremely instagrammable modern dance moment, choreographed exclusively for the event. All against the artistic backdrop of Gaggenau’s latest appliance. Groups were then taken around the hidden areas to peek at the latest and, drum roll, future products. A busy day of handholding and hospitality for the PR team. The event’s fame spread through social, a Monocle radio interview and word of mouth, and from then on, attendance just kept going up.
The impact
We were allocated a budget to secure influencer / content creators. We negotiated over 40% reduction in fees and also through our contacts we secured attendance from 10 additional creators for zero fee delivering €30,000 worth of content at no cost to our client. We reached a global and diverse, design-focussed audience of over 300,000. Digital and TV press coverage peaked at just over 15 million views, and that’s without even considering print. All of which was especially impressive in the new landscape where coverage is increasingly dependent upon advertising spend.
We were also judged on attendance, as no client wants to be standing in an empty installation. Three times as many visitors attended compared to Gaggenau’s previous, hugely successful, Milan Design Week. More importantly, we had more of the right people: 56% were the all-important Architects and Designers.
