We presented the new Lush Gorilla collection in Milan

How should you promote your brand? Engage the local community directly and aim for real interactions, or deploy the full potential of your media advertising and targeting as wide an audience as possible? There’s no reason not to do both: this was Lush UK’s brilliant intuition, in planning an international touring exhibition to promote their latest Gorilla perfume collection. After Berlin and Edinburgh, the exhibition came to Milan for a unique event in September 2017 and we had the pleasure of taking care of the logistics and finding the perfect venue for the occasion.

We presented the new Lush Gorilla collection in Milan

The exhibition

Lush’s latest perfume collection is a multimedia creation that transcends the world of fragrances to get contaminated with visual art. Like many great projects, it is the product of collaboration and friendship between two creative minds. Perfumer Simon Constantine teamed up with Dallas photographer and director Hal Samples to create a collection of 14 fragrances based on a variety of narrative and conceptual suggestions. Hence the idea of promoting them outside of the usual channels, by creating an immersive gallery experience with installations, film and photographs. These are the media through which the public can interact with the creations in sections with suggestive names such as “the Road From Damascus” and the “Self Esteem Machine” and take a break by sitting down in a disused water cistern that has been tagged by Banksy.

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The venue

For the last leg of this spectacular tour, we needed to find a venue that combined personality with flexibility, that was both innovative and stylish and that could express the brand values while integrating them in that unique Milan vibe. When an event is so strongly characterized, you don’t want to pick a venue that will alter its spirit with an incompatible style, but you don’t want you space to be bland or devoid of history either. Atelier Corso Como 5 was the perfect answer for our Lush event. It is strictly connected to the city’s identity, as Corso Como happens to be one of the most iconic streets in Milan. The venue itself is also a favourite of artists and fashion professionals, and it is often used to host performances and exhibitions or as a set for video and photoshootings, making it perfect to channel the personality of our Lush event. When it comes to style, however, it allows creative event planners to give their imagination free reign: its impressive 400 square meters are designed as a perfectly modular structure, that adapts easily to each event’s unique needs. This is the holy grail of event planning, particularly within the context of a series of events touring across multiple countries: a venue that allows you to bring out the event’s personality, making it instantly recognisable as an instance of the brand’s communication, while also marking it as unique, by integrating it into the leaving, breathing organism of each city.

In conclusion: the secret of an event’s success

There is, of course, no magic recipe to ensure a corporate event’s success, but there are aspects that are essential to a smooth process. Working on this event, for instance, we had further proof – if any was needed – of just how vital communication is. Internal communication with our team, communication with the client, the vendors and all service providers. Particularly when a brand has such specific requirements as for aesthetics and style, it is essential for an event planner to be in tune not only with the client’s expressed needs, but also with its implicit goals, desires and aspirations. Coordination and communication are key.