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Product Launch / Experiential

Starbucks: EAU de PSL

We turned the Pumpkin Spice Latte into a real Eau de Parfum, then gave 10,000 minis to Starbucks Rewards members.

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Client
Starbucks Romania
Brands
Starbucks, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Starbucks Rewards
Year
2025
Markets
Romania, Bulgaria
What we did
Idea, Product development, Launch event, Influencers, Social, In-store, DOOH, PR
Talent
  • Nicole CherryLaunch host and key visual

The brief

PSL season 2025 for Starbucks Romania. A year earlier we had hidden a secret PSL pop-up in a cornfield outside Bucharest, so this one had to go further. The brief was to make the PSL more than a drink. We gave ourselves a second job: run it all through Starbucks Rewards, so the hype would show up as sign-ups we could count.

The idea

“Accessorize with Pumpkin Spice.” We treated the PSL as the season’s must-have accessory and gave it the reverence (and the absurdity) of high fashion. Fashion houses launch fragrances, so we launched one. EAU de PSL, billed as the world’s first Eau de Parfum inspired by the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Unbranded, and never for sale.

Nicole Cherry wears the season: PSL in one hand, EAU de PSL in the other.
Nicole Cherry wears the season: PSL in one hand, EAU de PSL in the other.

How it worked

  • July to August. We approached about ten perfume houses and went with Swiss house LUZI, the quickest and keenest of them. Master Perfumer Anton Jimmy Studer worked through 30+ variations. Translating a taste into a smell was the hard part. “My mission was to capture the essence of a cultural phenomenon in a bottle,” he says.
  • 11 August. Scent locked: a unisex gourmand at 18% oil, with coffee, tea leaves and condensed milk on top, cinnamon, nutmeg and cotton candy in the heart, vanilla, tonka bean and musk at the base. We ordered 35 kg of fragrance oil and had the bottles filled in Romania, CPNP notification and dermatological patch test included. Green light to finished bottle took 6 to 8 weeks.
Product key visual: the 50 ml EAU de PSL and its box.
Product key visual: the 50 ml EAU de PSL and its box.
  • 27 August to 15 September. Starbucks’ feeds started treating the PSL like a fashion drop. Nicole Cherry shot the key visual with the bottle and a PSL-edition reusable cup, and on 10 September she teased the PSL as the fall accessory without naming the scent. An Instagram contest, “Complete the look with Pumpkin Spice”, ran from 11 to 15 September with five prizes described only as “a cosmetic product from a new range”.
The tease: 'Accessorize with Pumpkin Spice', 15.09 with Nicole Cherry, scent not shown yet.
The tease: 'Accessorize with Pumpkin Spice', 15.09 with Nicole Cherry, scent not shown yet.
  • 15 September. The launch at the newly renovated Starbucks in Promenada Mall, hosted by Nicole Cherry, had creators, influencers, Rewards Gold members, a photo wall, a display case and a 50 ml bottle for every guest. “We followed the playbook of a real fragrance launch,” says Ludwig Petre, our Creative Director.
The launch event film, with sound and subtitles.
Nicole Cherry sprays EAU de PSL at the display case, launch night at Promenada.
Nicole Cherry sprays EAU de PSL at the display case, launch night at Promenada.
Guests at the EAU de PSL photo wall, Starbucks Promenada Mall.
Guests at the EAU de PSL photo wall, Starbucks Promenada Mall.
  • 16 September. The reveal, and the gift went live in 60+ stores: a free 10 ml mini for Rewards members with a receipt of 50 lei or more, while stocks lasted. Store allocations ran from 20 to 480 minis, and the stores got a 3.15 m display with testers.
The reveal: EAU de PSL, limited edition, available 16.09.
The reveal: EAU de PSL, limited edition, available 16.09.
The 10 ml mini, the gift for Rewards members across Romania's stores.
The 10 ml mini, the gift for Rewards members across Romania's stores.
In-store spider display artwork (3.15 x 2.3 m), also the launch photo wall.
In-store spider display artwork (3.15 x 2.3 m), also the launch photo wall.
  • From 17 September. Unpaid unboxings and reviews started turning up on TikTok. Paid TikTok carried the animated key visual.
Animated key visual: from 'Accessorize with Pumpkin Spice' to 'EAU de PSL, now available'.
  • From 19 September. A US trade PR push took the story to the American ad press.
  • 26 September. An animated DOOH truck drove the key visual around Bucharest.
The animated DOOH truck drives the key visual through Bucharest, 26 Sep 2025.
  • 30 September. The bottle went through an airport security tray on Starbucks’ Instagram.
Airport security tray: the PSL, the 10 ml bottle and its box, ready for take-off.
  • Late September. The activation ran in Bulgaria too. Parfumo and Fragrantica now list EAU de PSL next to real perfumes, under Starbucks.

Results

2 daysuntil the first run was out of stock. The full run, topped up with new batches, lasted 2 weeks; we had planned for one to two months.
+300%new Starbucks Rewards members per day in the first days after launch.
Within hoursmany stores had used up their first-week allocation, and people phoned ahead to “reserve” a free gift.
10,000free 10 ml minis handed to Rewards members, plus a handful of 50 ml full sizes.
60+Starbucks stores in Romania, plus Bulgaria.
1.9Mpaid TikTok impressions for the key visual (1,911,634) and 42,148 six-second views, on about RON 3,000 of media.
228,675Facebook impressions for the key visual post, reaching 168,087 people.
37,558Instagram impressions for the same post, 22,038 people reached and 3,292 engagements.
+41.1%Facebook page visits in September (6.7K), with Instagram profile visits up 39.2% (14.2K), month on month.
Joint topMeta engagement rate of Starbucks Romania’s autumn for the EAU de PSL videos, level with the PSL and Mystery Bags posts.
60+guests at the launch, 30+ of them influencers and celebrities.
10+outlets covered it in Romania, the US, Italy and Poland. The Polish one wrote about it a year later.

In the press

Credits

  • Client: Starbucks Romania (AmRest Coffee)
  • Agency: Tuio

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