Positioning a 200-year-old French luxury house for the Iraqi consumer — without diluting the heritage, and without recycling a Paris campaign that was never built for Erbil, Baghdad, or Basra audiences in the first place.
Start a brand projectGuerlain entering the Iraqi market needed a digital presence that protected the heritage of the brand while still feeling native to the local consumer. A 200-year-old maison can't be translated by pushing the global asset library through a local handle — the tone, cadence, and even the product mix have to be rebuilt around how Iraqi audiences actually shop for luxury beauty.
The challenge: luxury beauty in Iraq is growing fast, audiences are sophisticated, and they travel — they know what the brand looks like in Dubai, Paris, and London. But the imported global campaigns don't always land locally. The Arabic copy reads as translated, the casting feels foreign, and the calls-to-action don't map to how purchases actually happen on the ground. We were brought in to fix exactly that gap.
In-studio shoots in Erbil producing campaign-grade stills and motion that sit comfortably alongside Guerlain's global asset library — but cast, styled, and lit for the local market.
A curated KOL roster of Iraqi and Kurdish creators vetted for fit, audience quality, and brand alignment. No mass seeding — every collaboration was hand-picked.
Digital campaigns built around real retail moments — counter launches, Ramadan gifting, fragrance debuts — with paid media tied directly to in-store and online sell-through.
A bilingual editorial voice that holds the maison's tone in both Arabic and English. Copy written, not translated, with care for register and cultural nuance.
Branded video impressions in the launch quarter alone, across Meta and YouTube placements (approximate).
A hand-picked influencer roster of Iraqi and Kurdish creators activated through the campaign cycle.
Return on ad spend on paid acquisition across the campaign window — well ahead of category benchmark (approximate).
Lift in unaided brand recall in the target audience between pre- and post-campaign tracking (approximate).
Luxury brands don't fail in Iraq because the audience isn't there — they fail because they treat the market as a translation problem instead of a creative one. Guerlain's launch worked because every asset, every creator, and every paid placement was built for the local consumer first, with the maison's standards held intact. That's the model we now apply across every luxury client we work with in the region.