Designing an Interactive Storytelling Gemme
As one of the leading luxury brands in the world, Bvlgari hardly needs an introduction. The Rome-based company has been crafting one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry for over 130 years; in the last 4 decades, they’ve expanded their creative vision to watch, accessory, and parfum design, which has turned their established European brand into an international powerhouse.
Bvlgari’s long legacy of innovation and craftsmanship has provided a solid foundation for brand storytelling. However, translating that story from print to online has proved to be a challenge—particularly on social media in the U.S., where other designers secured an early foothold on consumer conversations and engagement.
Instead of trying to outshine U.S. competitors on social, BVLGARI Parfums turned their attention to finding an avant-garde way to reimagine their brand experience for the digital realm. Their search eventually led them to Ceros.
The Challenge: Working Against the Clock
For the launch of their first haute perfumery, Le Gemme, a collection of 6 luxurious eau de parfums inspired by 6 opulent gemstones, BVLGARI Parfums secured an exclusive partnership with U.S. retailer Bloomingdales. Oneeka Botu, Head of Marketing for BVLGARI Parfums, worked tirelessly with her team to create a stunning in-store installation to introduce the collection—and she wanted to create something equally stunning for Bloomingdales.com.
An ordinary product page seemed much too limiting. To convey the unique story of each fragrance and the full journey of the collection, Oneeka wanted to be able to leverage photos, videos, interactivity, and music to create a fully immersive experience that would transport viewers around the globe.
The BVLGARI Parfums team had the vision and the tools to bring their vision to life—the problem was timing. By the time all of the stakeholders were on the same page, Oneeka’s team only had about 72 hours to create a fully interactive, mobile-friendly presentation for Bloomingdales.
With an ordinary design and development process, this kind of ambitious deadline would have been impossible to meet. But with the Ceros Studio and creative services team at hand, the impossible became a reality. Over the course of 3 days, Bulgari was able to create, review, and approve a rich digital experience by leveraging existing creative assets and Ceros’s design expertise.
“Partnering with the team at Ceros, we were able to turn this amazing presentation around in a very short amount of time. Ceros met all of my demands—and I had a lot of them,” says Oneeka, who wasn’t willing to sacrifice quality for the sake of a tight production schedule. “When an issue arose, we were able to find a solution quickly so that everyone was happy with the end result.”
The Results: Sparkling Storytelling
The goal was to introduce Bloomingdale’s online shoppers to Le Gemme in a way that would engage readers with the haute parfumery collection and drive more consumers to visit Bulgari’s in-store boutique. The Ceros experience they created successfully achieved this goal: They saw increased average view times, strong click rates, and a phenomenal 84% video play rate.
84% Video Play Rate
Ceros's interactive experience drove high engagement from consumers.
“Bloomingdale’s thinks the experience is a wow. The buzz in the industry is that people are very impressed with the overall experience, and the beauty advisors in store love it,” says Oneeka. The Bvlgari team was particularly happy with the way the final product worked on mobile, putting Le Gemme’s story right in consumers’ hands.
Le Gemme Performance
Over the course of 6 weeks, the Le Gemme experience averaged:
• 1.49 average view
• 3.9 average clicks per visitor
• 84% video play rate