Cartier is a French Luxury Brand, beloved in Korea for its Jewelry & watches. To convey the Watchmaking heritage of Cartier, we opened “Time Unlimited” campaign, in Seoul, South Korea.

We implemented a 360 media activation across online and offline channels to enhance consumer engagement and offered an opportunity to experience the journey of Cartier Watchmaking, with direct try-on experiences in the exhibition.

South Korea has experienced rapid growth in the luxury market, over the past three years through the pandemic. Korea has become the fourth largest luxury market, following the United States, China, and Japan.

The pandemic lockdown and travel restrictions have surged luxury item purchases due to the psychology of compensation. While most marketing budgets were frozen due to reduced consumption, the luxury industry was an exception.

South Korea’s luxury market has shown remarkable growth and recovery, reaching its highest figures in history after overcoming challenges from previous years. The luxury market in Korea became a battleground, unlike anything experienced before.

To establish unrivaled visibility and imprint brand awareness in the luxury sector, Cartier initiated “Time Unlimited” Campaign, with a particular focus on Cartier’s watch collection.

Although Cartier maintained its dominance in the jewelry category ranking no.1 in sales and influence, it hasn't secured no.1 top-of-mind status in the watch category. Rolex had positioned itself as the most preferred and there was a growing desire for high-complication watches such as Patek Phillippe, Audemars Piguet, and Vacheron Constantin, Cartier needed to step up.

During the Covid recession, while the jewelry market experienced the fastest growth, the watch market did not recover to pre-COVID levels, with a decline in marketing costs. (Watch Media Spending 2023: -44.6% vs 2019 / -5.4% vs 2022).

We saw this uncertain market status as a new opportunity to change the market paradigm. The campaign would put Cartier watches in a superior position and desirable in the consumer mindset.

Over the past 3 years of Covid, the desire for offline activities surged, and with the gradual lifting of restrictions on external activities, this desire exploded.

Brands wanted to promote their products and increase awareness by offering positive ‘experiences’, without making direct sales.

This was in response to changing consumer needs and the increase in social media engagement. With spaces designed not only to sell but to like, click, and share, Pop-up store experience skyrocketed.

In line with these trends, we launched “Time Unlimited” to provide young consumers with an immersive experience of Cartier watches. We wanted to raise bold awareness among young consumers and fully engage them with an emerging exhibition space.

Key objective was to establish a strong brand image and convey the message of “Time Unlimited” through various channels, including media, PR, and outdoor advertising.

We targeted the young generation by setting up an offline exhibition in SeongSu, Soho of Seoul in Korea, breaking the norm of typical luxury main streets where luxury boutiques are usually located.

We completed a holistic campaign by unifying the message of this campaign through “Time Unlimited” exhibition across 360 media and PRs, including Digital Display Ads, Social, Search, Print (Newspaper & Magazine), and Outdoor media.

The media strategy was to maximize visibility by exposing our message dominantly to let the young target have a sensational impact and lead to the Cartier exhibition experience.

We customized and recreated Digital, Print & (D)OOH to fit the campaign creative, and to deliver a more exclusive and impactful message to the audience than before.

We also encouraged interest and activated digital experiences by driving user action through customized digital advertising.

We maximized awareness of the ‘’Time Unlimited’’ message by delivering customized media ideas on an overwhelming scale before the exhibition opened.

New formats were created to deliver the message in the most impactful way than ever before. The 4-pages cover wrap of Korea's No.2 newspaper was attempted for the first time in the watch category.

With an exclusive partnership with Naver, Korea’s top digital channel, we showcased a “Full-screen ad” that dominated Naver’s main 3 content pages for 2 hours. We exposed the ad according to users’ journey, as they swipe left-right on Naver’s main page. This was the first trial in the watch category.

Wall wrappings and graffiti near the exhibition site were developed to captivate the young audience and induce their foot traffic. We expanded coverage to Hongdae and Gangnam with 100% SOV DOOH and Sync Ads to amplify the impact.

The exhibition was a huge success, with all the reservations sold out within 24 hours of the opening. The number of actual visitors exceeded our initial goal by 160%, totaling 8,596 visitors.

Over 1K organic social media posts were created by visitors, resulting in over 475,000 social engagement actions.

The media performance was impressive, with digital media generating 339 million impressions (Korean population 53M). More than 47% of Koreans were exposed to Naver's exclusive 2-hour full-screen campaign.

The outdoor media was exposed to 27.9 million traffic (car and foot traffic, including duplication) and newspaper wrapping ads were delivered to 900,000 subscriber households in the greatest Seoul.

Cartier's position in the watch market improved in Share of Visibility (SOV) from 4th to 2nd in 2023. Watch sales achieved a remarkable 200% growth based on watchmaking standards.