Kenzo Parfums
The new international platform for the unique world of Kenzo Parfums.
The new international platform for the unique world of Kenzo Parfums.
The briefing from Kenzo Parfums International was pretty clear: rise up the standards from the digital side of their communications to make them at the same level as other marketing disciplines they shine, such as print or TV advertising. At the end, what they searched was to have the same experience regardless of the media the user was in, all in tune with their brand DNA.
Besides this first input, the project had other important factors such as the simplicity of usage from a user’s point of view, or the challenges of CMS which needed to be conceived for several marketing teams worldwide.
Creative Direction, Art Direction, Design, Prototype
Kenzo Parfums
2018
Digital Art Direction
UX
UI
We pitched and we won with a combination of a technical agency and a creative agency. Once the project started I assumed the role of directing my creative team and a small creative portion of the technical agency. I spoke with their developers too, in order to fullfill their needs before we started to make creative decisions unilaterally.
On the other hand, we had regular meetings with the people of Kenzo every week in order to be aligned with their brand and their needs for the platform.
Back in 2018 we still designed with Sketch App. It was (is) a great tool, but honestly, it was before we switched to Figma. At the time Sketch didn’t had the option to work collaboratively live with the other members of the team, and we struggled to figure out a way of working in 2 different spaces without duplicating files or losing components along the way.
The best way we found was to create a separate Sketch file that served us as a Design System, where afterwards we linked to our specific Sketch files. That Design System file was shared on our Google server ready to everyone to access it. Unfortunately the process wasn’t as successful as it sounds.
Even that, with some ups and downs, we delivered each week religiously.
One thing we tried to overcome was the possibility to create pages and organise content in a compelling and fluid way. We concieved the CMS back-office in a way where the client could use pre-defined components and organise them and move them up and down to create custom pages.
This approach was key to define the main functionalities and specificities of the platform before we started to design them.
For the developers was also key to understand this way of working, especially to choose which technology to use: React, Vue, Angular, Wordpress plugins...
The platform needs to accomplish different objectives, mixing emotional and rational issues. The emotional side was driven by the content mostly, but also on how the different functionalities were conceived to help the user and the contributors to get the most of the site.
Also, even though is not an e-commerce site it was conceived to be polyvalent enough to evolve to a full e-commerce when needed.
At the end, the strategy for the website was created to put the digital platform as part of Kenzo’s ecosystem. Coming from ads, passing through films, influencers and social networks, the site will help users to inspire and convince towards the final step of the travel: the purchase.
The strategy behind the content was done. The overall Art Direction, the User Experience, the UI. All ready.
And then we found ourselves at the same spot as many other agencies in our situation: the development phase was not going to be produced by our partner agency and it was going to be developed by the internal teams of the client. The first reaction was denial, then relief. And finally, rage.
All our hard work put to the final outcome, our long discussions about how the interactions should work, paddings, sizes, ratios. All was put on hold and we finally deliver our visual work to a team we didn’t have the chance to speak with, or debug with.
All in all, we were happy we could help a brand like Kenzo Parfums launch their international platform online, and get +35% on daily users, on 14 different markets and 8 different languages. Is true that we didn’t have much control on the final outcome, but we were happy that the objectives were reached, clients happy and users growing. That’s a proof that sometimes projects doesn’t go as you expected them to be, but we learn as we go.
