ABOUT

The holiday season is synonymous with joy and wonder, but it also comes with an inescapable energy of hustle and bustle as consumers shop, travel, and prepare for the celebrations. So for two months during the holiday season this past November 2022 through January 2023, Pure Leaf designed and opened a holiday lounge at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) that brought its brand purpose to life and created a respite and space for relaxation for weary travelers. The brand goal for Pure Leaf is to drive top of mind awareness as the number one category leader in tea, and this activation was directly linked to driving brand relevance and awareness for consumers during the holidays at a prestige Foodservice customer.

We created the Pure Leaf lounge at PHL Airport in collaboration with our brand commercial marketing and North Division partners to grow trial and consideration during the holiday season. We wanted to share the brand’s “No Is Beautiful” purpose-driven campaign messaging in a creative way by inviting consumers to interact with a bespoke lounge, providing a space to relax from the holiday stress. The finished look perfectly captured the Pure Leaf mantra that saying “no” (or keeping things simple so that you can say “yes” to what matters) is beautiful.

The Design team led all creative concepting, from ideation to execution. The activation allowed visitors a space to relax surrounded by joyful holiday décor, branded stocking stuffer gifts, select books from Pure Leaf partner Reeseʼs Book Club collection, and information about the Pure Leaf “No” grants supporting the aspirations of women. Brand ambassadors offered guests a complimentary bottle of Pure Leaf along with cocktail recipe cards to carry a piece of Pure Leaf inspiration with them as they continued on with their day.

The look and feel of the “No Is Beautiful” campaign leans heavily into distinct topiary plant walls, floral accents that tie back to product flavors or partnership brand colors, premium marble surfaces, hints of gold-styled props and clean font choices with a tagline sign-off in script. Pure Leaf also has strong brand equity in the color black, so it was important that these elements were integrated into the brandʼs touchpoints.

For the application of “No Is Beautiful” for the Pure Leaf Holiday Lounge, we leveraged two fixed central columns that were a part of the existing footprint, and used them as the main focal point to draw visitors in. We restructured it as a photo opp complete with a beautiful topiary plant wall, velvet burgundy sofa, and neon sign that spotlighted the “No Is Beautiful” purpose messaging. This multifunctional build out served as both an elevated reading nook flanked with shelves filled with festive holiday décor, Pure Leaf product, and Reeseʼs Book Club picks. Brand ambassadors offered guests a stocking stuffer gift, free Pure Leaf coupons, and mocktail/cocktail recipe cards to carry a memory of Pure Leaf home with them as they traveled to meet friends and family for the holidays.

This was the first activation for Pure Leaf where the entire creative development process was handled in-house. Knowing the lounge’s two-month long timeframe would be accompanied by hefty production costs, we strategically kept all creative ideation and experiential design execution internal in order to significantly reduce budget. The Design team started with rough sketch work across a variety of concepts, and then carefully selected the material finishes for each to be brought to life digitally. We hand-picked everything from furniture, plants, and wallpaper down to the shelving decor to bring the visual identity of Pure Leaf to life in a 3D space. This was the longest-running activation the brand had ever executed. Our brand commercial marketing team partnered with Track, an event management and production agency, to help facilitate layers of complex logistics between the Federal Department of Aviation, fabricators, construction crews, and PHL Airport stakeholders—ultimately bringing the teamʼs creative vision to life.

The Pure Leaf PHL Airport pop-up ran for a period of eight weeks, from November 21, 2022 through January 15, 2023. The lounge welcomed 3,124 visitors (during staffed hours) with an average stay of 25 minutes. The lounge also earned 179 million media impressions with 100% positive sentiment. It was covered by outlets such as MSN, Trend Hunter, Philly Grub, World Tea News, and travel bloggers like the Travel Addict and Harriet Baskas. On average, Philadelphia International Airport has 32 million travelers and is a key prestige account for the Pure Leaf brand’s North division. During the peak Thanksgiving time when the lounge was open, the airport had 867,000 travelers pass through (+12% vs 2021) and in December the airport had over 2 million travelers (+12% vs 2021).