Andrea Baumgartner possesses nearly two decades’ experience in travel retail marketing, branding and promotions.

A new boutique service agency is aiming to ‘close the gap’ between the gradual pick-up in passenger travel and the immersive marketing activities encouraging them to shop and spend.

Promo Passion is the brainchild of Andrea Baumgartner, a duty free and retail marketing expert with nearly 20 years’ experience in the business.

Having helped to execute more than 100 travel retail brand promotions globally during her time working for several leading drinks brands, Baumgartner more recently began advising start-ups looking to penetrate the industry, leading her to establish her own company.

Described as a ‘full-service provider’, Switzerland-based Promo Passion supports brands across all categories via high quality promotional activities in global travel retail.

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Its capabilities include planning, managing and executing promotions at airports, fairs and events: from producing and installing visuals, developing packaging relaunches and designing promotional areas based on brands’ requirements to organising POS, tasting stock shipments and recruiting promoters.

Baumgartner told TRBusiness: “The global travel retail market is starting to pick up, after the last two years of slow activity and some companies had to reduce their GTR teams. Therefore, I see an opportunity to help them without having to make large investments, such as hiring a full-time employee.

“I see my offering as different from other agencies. I come from the brand side. Customers can decide whether they want to work out their own promotional calendar with the retailers or if they want to use my expertise in this area. Once the final promotional calendar is set, I implement the promotions and take care of the communication with all the agencies involved. This means that I work with local agencies, booking promotional staff and hiring stand builders. This frees up important time for the client.”

According to Promo Passion, its aim is to support brand owners gain ‘in-house capacity to focus on value-generating work and outsource cyclical needs’.

“For all your global travel retail events you have one single point of contact, who is highly experienced,” the company goes on to say.

“Your marketing needs are in good hands as structured project management tools are implanted during all stages of your project’s needs.”

Baumgartner’s CV includes 14 years working for German spirits company Underberg, where she held global responsibility for international markets as well as travel retail.

She then moved to South African wine & spirits firm Distell International Ltd, the subject of a recent planned takeover by Heineken.

As Head of Marketing Global Travel Retail at Distell, Baumgartner developed and implemented global marketing campaigns, launched product innovations and worked closely with local distributors.

During that time, she led and activated numerous promotions on cruise ships, in border shops and at airports all over the world.

“I love the global travel retail world,” added Baumgartner. “You meet amazing people and I enjoy the vibe and the challenges.”

Baumgartner can be contacted at the following: [email protected]; www.promopassion.ch