Hennessy · 2025

Hennessy at Gold Gala

Designing a brand experience for the community that already calls Hennessy family.

Hennessy at Gold Gala

A multi-day brand experience for AAPI Heritage Month — designed to live across four venues, three days, and one of the most documented cultural moments in Asian America.

Creative Direction Experience Design Production Design Art Direction

ClientHennessy

AgencySTADM

RoleCreative Director

LeadMaxwell Davidson

ProducerDan Matthews, Isabel Ng, Grace Liu

Year2025

1.8B

Total audience reach across event coverage

120+

Press outlets covering Gold Gala 2025

600M

Social media reach

800+

A100 honorees, celebrities & cultural leaders

When a brand has been celebrated in Asian households for generations, the question isn't how to be seen — it's how to be felt as part of the family.

The Brief

Show up as Gold Gala's official spirit — without being a sponsor in the room.

Hennessy returned as the official spirits partner of Gold House's 4th Annual Gold Gala — the U.S.'s defining cultural celebration of Asian Pacific excellence, honoring the A100 list of changemakers across entertainment, sports, technology, and culture.

For our third year together, the brief was clear and the bar was high: design a multi-day brand experience that felt native to Gold House's aesthetic, native to the AAPI community Hennessy has long been part of, and worthy of the editorial and press scrutiny the event commands.

The Approach

Hennessy isn't new to this community. We designed for that intimacy.

A bottle of Hennessy has been part of Asian celebrations for generations — Lunar New Year toasts, weddings, birthdays, family gatherings. That's not a marketing insight, that's lived experience. So rather than designing a sponsor activation that overlaid Hennessy on top of Gold Gala, we designed a brand experience that felt like Hennessy had always been there.

The design language took its cue from Gold House's own visual identity — satin gold, soft ivory, plush silhouettes — and let Hennessy's heritage palette of limestone, gold, and signature red sit inside it. Subtle embossed patterns and fluid gold strokes referenced traditional Asian motifs without literalism. The whole evening was designed to feel modern, restrained, and unmistakably Hennessy.

The experience was shaped across four distinct moments over three days — each with its own tone, but linked by a single visual and gestural vocabulary. From the intimate A100 pre-Gala dinner, to the Gold Carpet, to the main Gala, to the after-after at Intercrew LA, guests moved through a continuous Hennessy world.

The Experience

Four activations. Three days. One continuous world.

The brand experience was designed as four connected chapters — each scaled and styled to its moment, but built from the same visual grammar so guests felt continuity even as the energy shifted.

My focus was the visual and experiential flow: photo moments, florals, menus, print collateral, and the gestural choreography of what happened when. Production logistics were partnered with STADM's producers and Gold House's venue teams.

Day 1 · Friday

A100 Dinner at Fanny's

An intimate pre-Gala dinner for 100 honorees at the Academy Museum. Designed around the Paradis Mini Display Wall — a re-skinned version of an existing Hennessy installation — with engraved Paradis Mini gifting, four signature cocktails by mixologist Monique Johnson, and a curated floral program.

Day 2 · Saturday

Gold Gala

600 guests at The Music Center. The Hero Bar anchored the cocktail reception alongside a roaming bar cart, a Founder's Room VVIP bar with private Paradis tastings, and an X.O Mini engraving station. Bespoke cocktails by AAPI mixologist Ash Miyasaki — Jujube X.O, Kmelon V.S.O.P, Thai Mango Sour — paid tribute to Asian flavor traditions.

Day 2 · Saturday Night

After Party

800 guests, a Circular Hero Bar, a Founder's Room karaoke experience, and the visual centerpiece of the night: the X.O La Carafe & V.S.O.P Night Blaze Bottle Parade — eight styled models in coordinated wardrobe walking the bottles through the room.

Day 3 · After-After

Intercrew LA

A high-energy on-premise activation extending the Hennessy presence into the after-after-party, with a second X.O La Carafe parade, custom stage graphics, and brand visibility moments designed for a younger, late-night AAPI crowd.

Hero Moment

The Hennessy Paradis Wall.

The Gold Carpet needed a photo moment — not a step-and-repeat, but an installation that would feel architectural enough to anchor the night and editorial enough to live on every photographer's lens.

The Paradis Wall was sculpted to echo the silhouette of the Paradis decanter itself — soft, curved layers in gold and champagne, set with a cascade of illuminated Paradis Mini bottles. Warm, radiant, and quietly opulent. By the end of the night it had become one of the most photographed moments of the Gala — appearing in coverage from Rolling Stone, ELLE, BFA, and across celebrity social.

It also held a second function. On the wall, the first-ever 3L Hennessy Paradis bottle was signed by guests throughout the evening, then auctioned off to benefit Gold House. The Wall wasn't just a photo backdrop — it was a fundraising artifact.

"A photo moment that earned the celebrities, instead of borrowing them."

Every detail was designed to read as Hennessy first, sponsorship second: the bottle silhouette, the warm gold gradient, the Paradis logo treated with restraint. No step-and-repeat. No logo wall. The brand was the architecture.

The Cocktail Program

Cocktails built around Asian flavor, not Asian aesthetic.

We partnered with mixologist Ash Miyasaki — a 20-year veteran of the LA bar scene and USBG board member — to build a custom cocktail program around Hennessy V.S.O.P, X.O, and Paradis.

The brief was specific: don't make "Asian-inspired" cocktails that lean on visual tropes. Build drinks that use the actual ingredients of the cuisines these celebrations are part of — jujube, jasmine, Thai basil, melon, tangerine peel. Let the flavors do the storytelling.

Press notes

Rolling Stone singled out the program: "Bespoke cocktails designed by LA-based mixologist Ash Miyasaki that paid tribute to Asian flavors and celebratory motifs."

Cocktail · X.O

Jujube X.O

"Hennessy X.O, jujube star anise syrup, jasmine green tea, Bénédictine, Peychaud's bitters, Thai basil, tangerine peel."

Inspiration: Sazerac × Old Fashioned — spirit-forward, herbaceous, served on large-format ice

Cocktail · V.S.O.P

Kmelon V.S.O.P

"Hennessy V.S.O.P, melon, citrus, light effervescence — designed to refresh and reset the palate."

Inspiration: summer drinking — bright, sessionable, photogenic on the carpet

Cocktail · V.S.O.P

Thai Mango Sour

"Hennessy V.S.O.P, Thai mango, lime, sour balance — a Southeast Asian flavor in a classic sour format."

Inspiration: Thai street fruit — sweet, sharp, tropical

A100 Dinner · Hennessy classics

API Twist Series

"Four API-flavored takes on Hennessy classics — designed by Monique Johnson for the intimate A100 honoree dinner at Fanny's."

Inspiration: the family table — flavors that belong at any AAPI celebration

Press

In the room. On the record.

"Hennessy returned as the 'official spirit' of the Gold Gala, with bespoke cocktails designed by LA-based mixologist Ash Miyasaki that paid tribute to Asian flavors and celebratory motifs."

Read the article →

"Inside Gold House's 4th Annual Gold Gala — Hennessy at the center of one of the year's defining AAPI cultural moments."

Read the article →

Result

Sponsorship as cultural participation.

120+

Press outlets covered Gold Gala 2025 — Rolling Stone, ELLE, BFA, Getty, and more.

The Hennessy experience at Gold Gala 2025 wasn't framed as a brand showing up at an event. It was framed as a brand that belongs to this community showing up the way family does — present, considered, and ready to celebrate.

The Paradis Wall became one of the most-photographed moments of the night, picked up across Rolling Stone, ELLE, and celebrity social. The signed 3L Paradis bottle was auctioned to benefit Gold House. And Hennessy's third year as the Gala's official spirit landed not as a renewal of a sponsorship, but as a deepening of a relationship.

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