PHILLIPS
CASE STUDY
Accompanying the growth of a global auction house with a leading watch department across multiple platforms
CHALLENGE
Phillips is a leading global platform for buying and selling secondary market goods with a dedicated expertise in Modern and Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Editions, Watches and Jewellery. Phillips also offers an online auction platform accessible anywhere in the world. Beyond its sales platforms, Phillips also offers professional services and advice on all aspects of collecting. Auctions and exhibitions are held at its salerooms in New York, London, Geneva and Hong Kong, while clients are further served by representative offices throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. In addition to providing selling and buying opportunities through auction, Phillips brokers private sales and offers appraisals, valuations, and other financial services. In 2018, Phillips X was launched as an exhibitions and private sales programme that brings exceptional selling and non-selling exhibitions to clients, collectors and the public through year-round curation. Our challenge was to generate visibility for Phillips’ global activities in France, and highlight its representative office and exhibition space in Paris.
OUR WORK
We were retained by Phillips in early 2019 to raise its visibility and presence in France. Starting in September 2020, our mandate will be extended to cover Switzerland. Our brief extends from management profiles to international sales and the promotion of the premises at 46 Rue du Bac, a venue that serves both as a year-round destination for collectors and art lovers, and an exhibition space where visitors can interact with world-class specialists in their own field. Our proven expertise and established network of key media, collectors and opinion leaders in the Art, Design, and Watches & Jewellery sectors made us a perfect fit to communicate Phillips’ activities and expertise, in what has been a seamless collaboration across five departments. Our targeted campaign covers media relations for auctions in London, New York, Hong Kong and Geneva, special events and exhibitions, and the permanent showroom for watches known as ‘Perpetual’, opened at Phillips London in Berkeley Square. We have worked on a number of Paris exhibitions such as Foujita, Sanyu, and Jorge, in addition to organising one-to-one interviews and lunches for key editors with the Phillips executive team and its specialists.
RESULTS
With an integrated approach, we have developed compelling story angles and key messages for a targeted programme of ongoing media relations and special events to accompany Phillips’ sales and exhibition schedule throughout the year. This has successfully generated a broad spread of high-impact coverage in the French press, across art and lifestyle publications as well as high-profile dailies. As a direct result, Phillips has noted an increase in traffic at their premises on Rue du Bac, higher attendance of exhibitions and increased consignments, all of which have contributed to enhancing business results. On the strength of our expertise in the sector, we have established greater visibility for Phillips’s global leadership in watches. We will continue to apply the same successful approach on a broader scale across both France and Switzerland in the fall.
