Belle d’Opium by Yves Saint Laurent is a new worldwide launch of a signature fragrance. The eau de parfum represents the new orient, addictive and intriguing. The main notes are Mandarin, Jasmine and Casablanca Lily (incense, sandalwood, and white pepper among tones). Opium has long been a brand that is a declaration of independence, an open desire for a taste of the forbidden and a defiance of taboos. In June 2010, YSL unveiled Belle d’Opium at an exclusive event in New York City.

WHAT IS YOUR OPIUM?

Yves Saint Laurent, the luxury fashion and beauty brand, was slated to pre-launch their updated new fragrance, Belle d’Opium, at a New York City summer soirée in June of 2010. Great Works was tasked with recruiting new consumers to engage in a sustained conversation with the YSL beauty brand. This began with a digital strategy of using the event to launch an online presence for YSL Beauty and its core consumers. Core objectives for the event were to build anticipation, create an online presence, and generate lasting impressions of the enthralling fragrance. Using the concept of an intoxicating and breathtaking Modern Salome, the Great Works team built a blog, whatisyouropium.com, as a hosting site for news surrounding the event. We also produced a total of 8 videos, which included a teaser trailer; a making of the event; the making of the fragrance; interviews with perfumers, celebrities, and fashionistas; a behind-the-scenes look at the event; the event itself; and crowd impressions and interviews. Additionally, our PR department was hired to coordinate online PR with Allison Broad PR company to ensure digital engagement before, during, and after the event.

Our activation plan was to liaise media exclusives with online influencers and drive traffic to the YSL Opium blog. We invited a handful of top-tier bloggers to the event and seeded YSL Opium blog exclusives with these bloggers to build buzz both prior to and post event. Our outreach invitees included fashion, beauty, and lifestyle sites such as NY Magazine’s The Cut, Jezebel, and Refinery29. In addition, we generated buzz within social media through a YSL Beauty Facebook page as a focus hub and created and seeded a Twitter hash tag #YSLparty to amplify the event.

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

The exclusives with top-tier media bloggers were successful through targeting of the the right online neighborhoods. Our PR efforts were able to obtain coverage of the fragrance and event from top sites such as HuffingtonPost.com, Vogue.com, and Cocoperez.com. The inclusion of online influencers from the beginning of creative development helped create and keep online culture interested in the overall story. In addition, the YSL Blog launch was successful because it was pitched to a very focused group of online media. The Twitter hash tag program was a success after pre-seeing hash tag before event and including a note in media alert page.

Overall, our efforts were able to establish:
• 47 online features that mentioned and/or directly linked to the YSL Opium blog
• 66.1+ Million Unique Impressions (from 47 online features)
• Estimated Ad Equivalent of roughly $1.1 million (from 47 online features)