The archive · Brand & Identity · Marketing decision · 2024
Cartier stages its Watches & Wonders booth as five magic worlds for its collections
Cartier staged Watches & Wonders as five magic installations — one per collection: Illusion, Suspended Time, Teleportation, Invisibility, Transformation.
Cartier
What it had to solve
At Watches & Wonders, the watch industry's flagship fair, Cartier wanted a highly immersive booth experience that showcased its watchmaking expertise. The creative task was to make five collections — and the mastery inside them — physically present rather than merely displayed.
How it works
At Watches & Wonders, the watch industry's flagship fair, Cartier wanted a highly immersive booth that showcased its watchmaking expertise rather than a row of glass cases.
Publicis Luxe answered with five themed installations inspired by magic — Illusion, Suspended Time, Teleportation, Invisibility and Transformation. Each concept translated a watch collection into a unique physical scenography, so every family of watches had its own world.
The craft was in the making: advanced craftsmanship, digital artistry and material innovation came together through 3D printing, intricate metalwork, custom lighting effects and hand-painted set designs.
The result was a space where Cartier's expertise merged with artistic storytelling — a booth that performed the brand's mastery instead of narrating it. The D&AD archive lists the work in its Luxury section, crediting Publicis Luxe as entrant and advertising agency.
Why it lands
- A magic theme fits what a mechanical watch does: it suspends, hides and transforms time, so each installation extends the product's own trick into space.
- Giving each collection its own concept keeps five very different lines distinct inside one booth, so visitors can navigate the brand by idea rather than by catalogue.
- Physical craft — metalwork, 3D printing, painted sets — mirrors the hand-finishing inside the watches, making expertise visible before anyone picks up a piece.
- An immersive environment lets a luxury fair visitor feel the collection instead of reading a spec, which suits products whose value is sensation as much as mechanism.
What it did
The booth merged Cartier's expertise with artistic storytelling, giving each collection a distinct physical idea — from suspended time to invisibility — inside one immersive space. The D&AD archive page records no visitor figures.
What you can take
An exhibition room can be the message: give each product family its own fantastical physical idea, and the space demonstrates the craft instead of explaining it.
Since then
The D&AD awards archive lists Watches & Wonders in its Luxury section, crediting Publicis Luxe as entrant company and advertising agency, with Cartier as brand and client and Enzyme, Atelier 20.12 and Scenic Sets as production companies. The page records no visitor figures, so the case stands on the idea: five watch collections translated into five magic-themed installations — Illusion, Suspended Time, Teleportation, Invisibility and Transformation — built with 3D printing, intricate metalwork, custom lighting and hand-painted sets inside a single immersive booth.
Sources
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