For the whole month of May, watch group Festina has launched a pan-European airport advertising campaign that will reach 65m passengers, marking the brand’s first major duty free and travel push of this kind.

The Time to Live by Gerard Butler campaign at seven major gateways follows the Spanish house’s signing of the actor as its brand ambassador, as part of a radical shift into the lifestyle arena.

Large digital and/or lightbox ads – the largest space being 36m x 8.3m – are now present until the end of May at the following airport locations: Heathrow T2, Paris Charles de Gaulle T2E, Frankfurt, Milan Malpensa, Barcelona T1, Madrid and Brussels.

‘A DIFFERENT LIGHT’

Jason Newman, Export Manager at Festina Lotus, tells TRBusiness: “We have chosen to do this campaign in the main European airports to increase brand awareness in general and also to show Festina in a different light.

“While we remain true to our heritage as a sport-orientated watch brand, with Gerard Butler we want to push the limits of brand appeal to a wider audience. We feel that the sophistication and sex appeal of this recently-launched campaign will have an impact on sales, the concrete extent of which remains to be seen.

“Initial reactions have been promising and experience so far shows a surprisingly positive effect of the campaign on the sales of women’s watches which is a growing market for us.”

Festina says that while it has embarked on this pan-European project it continues to run localised sales and marketing activities in conjunction with duty free and travel retail clients. For example, this month the brand is occupying a large space at Madrid Barajas together with World Duty Free.