While our audience is used to have "everything right now", our objective for the anniversary of our 150 years old XO cognac was to surprise them with something special and push them to question the true value of time.

Luxury brands are used to communicating in traditional ways. But we wanted to capture the imagination of the audience with something out of the ordinary, yet completely inseparable to the product: its glass and the 3-minute tasting ritual. So, we wanted to create for the connoisseurs who appreciate the detail and true art of tasting cognac, a new experience through its glass to discover the colours, taste, and textures before drinking it.

As a brand that takes a century to create one of the most luxurious cognacs on earth, we wanted to celebrate the 150th anniversary of our emblematic XO cognac with our customers and connoisseurs. To reveal the unique spirit of its aromas, we created Hennesscreen, an anamorphic animation film that can only be viewed through a glass of Hennessy cognac.

An amorphosis show where all shapes and lines have been specially designed thanks to an optical study to be recomposed through a glass of Hennessy cognac and make it work like a lens.

Because one thing that has never evolved is the 3-minute ritual of letting the cognac breathe before taking the first sip. We wanted to create a big impression, that’s why with Hennesscreen, we transformed this waiting time and this century-old ritual into a new experience to explore our XO cognac.

85% of people put their phone on the table when sitting at a bar table. So, we seized this opportunity and hacked this moment to communicate about cognac tasting, by changing the way they use their phone to project an anamorphosis film through a glass of XO cognac.

We came up with this intriguing concept to be used in luxury hotels, pop up stores, art fairs during the tasting when people wait 3 minutes for the XO cognac to breathe To do so, we collaborated with an artist, Ugo Gattoni, to reinvent the XO notes and taste and its savoir-faire in an artistic way. The animation movie is showcased on an anamorphosis broadcast by a smartphone and only clearly visible through a Hennessy cognac glass.

Ugo Gattoni is an artist and art director working predominantly with graphite or ink. Ugo’s work is a whirlwind of minute details, dreamlike characters and typography. Thanks to an optical study of the curvatures of the Hennessy glass, its dimensions and the refraction of the cognac, we allowed the glass to function as a lens when subjected to the light projection of the smartphone. From this data Ugo Gattoni then made the design of the anamorphosis.

And because it takes 3 minutes to taste Cognac XO, this unique show has a duration that corresponds to the 3-minute ritual of letting the XO breathe before taking the first sip. Hennessy has transformed this waiting time and this century-old ritual into a new experience. To strengthen the link with the product, the storytelling of the film is made around the 4 complementary chapters like the 4 stages of the cognac tasting.

Thanks to this experience, we managed to generate

- A very good perception of Hennessy among key clients and distributors with 64 000 customer views in 72 countries

- +30% sales in all pop-up stores where this unique show was implemented

- 580 000 impressions

Last but not least, this anamorphosis was perceived as a real piece of art in art fairs such as Art Basel, where Hennessy is not only seen as the official cognac brand but as a real exhibitor.