MITCHELL OAKLEY SMITH

A Semi Permanent Hotel presented by Highsnobiety — May 2021



After a year defined by stasis and the social distance between us, Semi Permanent and Highsnobiety combined their shared vision and commitment to champion progress, innovation, and purpose beyond product, to create a first-of-its-kind omni-channel consumer platform, engaging audiences through physical and digital means.

Unifying Highsnobiety’s highly engaged digital audience, and Semi Permanent’s 19+ years experience in immersive event and curation design, we arrived at a A Semi Permanent Hotel presented by Highsnobiety - a safe haven of innovation and connectedness through design.

Allocation exhausted in under 5 minutes

2,000+ person waitlist

1,400+ guests across two-days

1M+ social reach

10,000+ social engagements

120%+ indexation on audience targets

Designed to immerse, and engage creative audiences in future thinking, contemporary culture and thought provoking ideas, the physical experience reimagined 15+ hotel rooms, the bar, rooftop, cinema, atrium and lobby as places to explore new ideas, products and stories.

This event format allowed us to manage audiences in a controlled environment including guest capacity flow, small group experiences and safe social distancing with Australia’s success in managing covid reinforcing confidence in the physical event.

The digital microsite brought the tactile experience to a global audience and those unable to attend in-person, through a fully-bespoke microsite on highsnobiety.com, replicating the physical hotel blueprint online featuring exclusive content including artist interviews and image galleries from the hotel talent and creatives.

Combining elements from both the Semi Permanent and Highsnobiety brands, we designed and created a bespoke brand identity for the experience, with creative direction across event collateral, uniforms, way-finding, guest experience, social and digital assets, and more.

Together with our collaborators, Polestar, RIMOWA and Glenfiddich; leaders in mobility, technology and beverage, we launched products and global innovations to a discerning audience of Cultural Pioneers who don’t just buy in to product, but invest in philosophies, and proliferate engaging ideas down to their peers and followers.

The experience featured curated installations and screenings by Gia Coppola, Flume and Jonathan Zawada’s ‘Tiddalik’, Haydenshapes, Daniel Arsham and Chris Stamp’s ‘Wave Relic’, Joji’s ‘The Extravaganza’, P.A.M’s ‘Postive Messages’ and more, and Future Classic DJs providing entertainment on the launch party night.

A Future Talks Program, hosted by acclaimed journalist and researcher Noelle Faulkner, brought together some of Australia’s brightest creative minds including musician Genesis Owusu, contemporary artists Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Jonny Niesche and Louise Zhang; acclaimed photographer Pierre Toussaint, Wiradjuri poet and artist Jazz Money, and more.