Creating at scale, 2Heads delivered their largest singular event when they brought Airbus home to Paris Air Show after four years.

Airbus is a global pioneer in the aerospace industry, operating in the commercial aircraft, helicopters, defence and space sectors. With over 130,000 employees and as the largest aeronautics and space company in Europe, Airbus is at the forefront of the aviation industry.

As a world-leader, Airbus are keenly aware of the pressure on aviation to demonstrate their commitment to a cleaner future for aerospace. Airbus’s purpose – to pioneer sustainable aerospace for a safe and united world – matters now more than ever and the lynchpin behind Airbus’s future experiences, events & environments is ensuring those values are reflected in every public appearance. For Airbus, no public event is greater than Paris Air Show.

Since its launch in 1909, the International Paris Air Show has constantly grown, and remains the largest aerospace event in the world. The 54th show edition took place at Paris’s Le Bourget Parc des Expositions; with 4 days of important trade events and 3 days of public spectacular, the 2023 edition was the first Paris Air Show since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Brief

Airbus’s brief to 2Heads was simple but significant; design, create and deliver a multi-building experience around their premier position at Paris Air show. This included the design and creation of a fully integrated pavilion that would host international dignitaries in subtle luxury and an immersive experience tent that promote Airbus’s understanding of changing market needs, customer focus and technological innovation.

Airbus required 2Heads to evolve the experience of Farnborough International Airshow with a series of immersions in Paris that showed how Airbus’s products connect people and places via air and space.

The Airbus Pavilion

2Heads designed the Pavilion to be the hub of the Airbus experience; a place where visitors were greeted to comfort and hospitality, a professional space where meetings and conversations could be held overlooking the static display of Airbus’s finest aircraft. The space had to be large enough to host a large number of visitors but designed in an intelligent way so to separate experiences for different press, civil and military delegations.

The Pavilion was a place for business, for serious conversations focused on the future of Airbus sales and technology. Delegate journeys were planned for the two floors to move guests from lounges to the correct meeting rooms, C-suite visitors to the right lounges and to provide a suite of facilities for the large number of press based at the pavilion. Constructed in 9 weeks, the Pavilion included multiple meeting/dining rooms, lounge & bar areas, the Le Club Lounge, 6VIP lounges, 7 VIP Suites and CEO Lounge, a Press Suite including interview rooms and auditorium, and a air display terrace.

The Airbus Tent

Where the Pavilion focused on hospitality, interviews, announcements and networking, 2Heads designed the Airbus experience tent to bring Airbus innovations to life. The resulting ‘A’ immersive experience proved very popular, a walkway tunnel packed with LED interior projections advertising imagery around Airbus’s ‘the world is a beautiful place’ campaign.

Painting a hopeful future for sustainability on our ever-evolving planet and to the great beyond in aerospace, the campaign celebrated Airbus’s new vision and direction, and used emotion to engage audiences beyond product features to human experiences and outcomes.

2Heads also created a lenticular screen of a floating Earth, hovering at the center of the tent and drawing attention to the Airbus vignettes that surrounded it’s glowing globe. The idea behind the Earth was to create a platform that captured Airbus’s purpose of ‘pioneering sustainable aerospace for a safe and untited world,’ and communicate that theme with gathering stakeholders in a way that reasonated. In line with Airbus’s brief, the Earth and ‘A’ campaign acted as an invite to guests to join a shared belief and movement in looking after the world, and expressed the belief that Airbus has a leading role in helping defend the future of a beautiful planet.