Pure Leaf PHL Airport Holiday Lounge | 2022

Designer: PepsiCo Design & Innovation, PepsiCo, New York, New York, USA
Manufacturer: PepsiCo, New York, New York, USA

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.

The design team created the Pure Leaf lounge at PHL Airport in collaboration with the brand’s commercial marketing and North Division partners to grow trial and consideration during the holiday season. They 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 concepts, 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 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).