When Pandora chief marketing officer Jennie Farmer sits beside me aboard the British Pullman train at London Victoria Station, shortly before we embark on the jewelry brand’s latest marketing activation, she apologises as she takes out her laptop. Farmer just flew in from New York, popped to her London base, and later this evening, is heading to Copenhagen, where the brand was born.
Farmer’s life is often in this gear, I learn throughout our five-hour train ride. Pandora, the world’s largest jewelry brand, is in the midst of amping up its global marketing activities under new CEO Berta de Pablos-Barbier. She was CMO of the brand from 2024-2026, before assuming the chief executive post in January. Farmer, previously marketing SVP, was promoted to CMO in tandem.
Launched in 1982, Pandora had long prioritized TV marketing, aimed at millennial, Gen X and baby boomer shoppers, Farmer explains. And while the brand still works with ambassadors of all ages, it’s shifted focused in the last two years to build relevance with the all-important and discerning Gen Z.
“Today, thinking about driving culture, we’re focused more on Gen Z, because that becomes a halo effect for other audiences,” Farmer says. “That’s something we’ve only really started doing over the last couple of years.”
Pandora’s business has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% over the last five years, from DKK 23.4 billion ($3.6 billion) in 2021 to a record DKK 32.5 billion ($5.7 billion) in 2025. Despite last year’s feat, organic growth fell to 6%, partly due pricing volatility in silver and gold.
Scaling sales volume and broadening appeal is key to keeping momentum, which is where the marketing investment comes in. Aligning with capital-F fashion is a core component of Farmer’s strategy: Pandora sponsored the last six editions of its native Copenhagen Fashion Week, from supporting the New Talent program, to hosting a series of star-studded dinners attended by brand ambassadors like Pamela Anderson and Adwoa Aboah.
For the last three years, it was the headline sponsor of the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Awards (this year, it’ll be co-sponsor), as well as a partner of London Fashion Week’s September edition. We’re aboard the Pullman train to celebrate Talisman, Pandora’s new line of astrological charms and pendants, with 21 creators and journalists including Pixie Geldof and Olivia Singer enjoying personal tarot readings mid-journey.
Despite its sponsorships, Farmer affirms that Pandora is not a fashion brand itself. “I think it’s important to say that we’re not a fashion brand.
We don’t see ourselves as a fashion brand,” she explains. “We work hard to be a jewelry brand, but we’re about stories.
When you speak to consumers, they often say I choose my outfit and then I choose my jewelry to say who I am that day and what I’m doing. So that felt like a nice association, especially since fashion feels like the ultimate form of self-expression.”
Farmer and de Pablos-Barbier both have long careers in luxury behind them. Farmer worked in marketing roles at companies including De Beers and Moët Hennessy, while de Pablos-Barbier held roles at Moët & Chandon and Lacoste before joining the Danish brand.
There’s a mutual understanding of how aligning with culture and fashion moments can get people talking. “We have a very aligned view, which includes rebalancing our media mix so that we’re investing more in digital channels, in advocacy, and getting more people to speak on behalf of [Pandora],” Farmer says, referring to the boom in user-generated content associated with the brand online.
By creating exciting events for consumers to attend, alongside visually pleasing activations creators of all sizes are keen to share, the two are facilitating this output. “We have so many Pandora fans who post amazing things on Instagram,” Farmer says. “So embedding ourselves in those cultural conversations is where we want to take the brand.”
From my Aquarius-embroidered train napkin to a towering three-tier cake at the brand’s Copenhagen dinner during fashion week, shareable details are key to every Pandora event. The brand also tries to change up the format to keep people talking — hence the train.
“We were really thinking about Pandora’s storytelling and self-expression, so the talisman zodiac collection is about telling stories of who you are and expressing your identity,” Farmer says. “Rather than take over a traditional venue, we thought: why don’t we make a journey of it?”
Pandora also monitors trends, and wants to respond to consumers’ growing interest in spirituality. “There are so many social trends around astrology, and people are really excited about it.
There are lots of content creators also producing a lot of content around it,” Farmer adds. Of course, the trend has to align with the brand’s existing values, and Pandora consumers have long used charms to express their interests and personalities.
“We thought it felt very Pandora because it’s about your identity and your story, but is also super relevant.”
Though activations of this caliber aren’t cheap. How does Pandora measure the return on investment?
“Obviously, we look at practical numbers like conversion, but around these activities it’s about how to build relevance,” she says. “As a brand, it’s very easy to put out advertising and tell your message.
But what we want to do is actually create a conversation with consumers, and I think that’s where having these types of activations allows people into the brand in a way that’s relevant to them. We’re looking at how many people are talking about Pandora after the event.”
Beyond the five-course lunch and champagne, the train activation featured a real cross section of talent, from self-development coach and influencer Nafousi to poet and model Kai-Isaiah Jamal. This model, working with diverse talent from different fields, is replicated across all activations and campaigns.
“When it comes to talent, I don’t like having one face of the brand, because Pandora is really for everyone,” she says. Pandora ambassadors range from South African pop star Tyla to Anderson.
“What we look for is expressive people who are unapologetic about who they are, and hopefully you see that through the people we work with. Consumers can really see if it’s just a transactional relationship as well — we build relationships over time.”
Collaborations to drive creativity
Pandora appointed a new chief product officer, Philippa Newman from Michael Kors in February, who is working alongside Farmer to refresh the offering and broaden brand engagement. Beyond design, this spring, Pandora launched a long-term creative platform called Wonders, which will tap various creatives to co-design limited collections based around a certain material and bring the communication to life through retail and events.
Act I was a limited-edition freshwater pearl collection, co-created with renowned British stylist Harry Lambert (best known for his work with Harry Styles).
While Pandora has long been known for its charm bracelets, beloved of millennials and Gen Zs of the past, the brand’s collaboration strategy aims to innovate. Many of the new initiatives, from Talisman to Wonders, are centered on re-imagining the charms and personal storytelling Pandora is known for.
“Pandora Wonders is really the [initiative] that stands out [to me],” says Farmer. “It’s about recontextualizing charms.
They are still charms, but they are so different from how we’ve done them before.”
Lambert also designed the immersive retail experiences and events around the collection, with a star-studded party during Paris Couture week, a pool party and a dinner for influencers in Montauk during the summer, and a London pop-up complete with a giant pearl fish sculpture at Battersea Power Station.
Activating at Paris Couture Week is bold for a brand that retails between $20-$2,000, Farmer acknowledges. “It obviously [was] quite brave,” she says, “but we wanted to show up in a fresh and fun way.
We hosted an evening of dancing and activities, and the press were saying it was a breath of fresh air.” Wonders is currently only rolled out in the UK, the US, Germany, France, Italy and Australia, and available for six months ending February. But Pandora may expand the platform in the future, she adds.
As a global brand, it can be challenging to understand where best to focus different projects and campaigns. “Balancing the global with the local is a challenge for most big brands,” Farmer says.
“You can’t be culturally relevant if you’re not locally relevant, but at the same time, you have one brand that you want to present, one DNA, one story. So it’s about trying to find that balance to say, here are the tentpole moments, here’s the story that we want to tell, but then giving the markets enough freedom to say, ‘This is how we want to amplify this.’ It’s about amplifying the stories that we’re creating globally, not creating things from scratch.”
A few months ago, Farmer visited Japan, a fast-growing market for Pandora, to see Summer Stories, an immersive pop-up in the heart of Shibuya, Tokyo. The pop-up featured new products, a gelato stand, and a photobooth, with over 200 media, influencers and celebrity guests attending the opening.
“Japan was really small, but we started investing in the market a few years ago, working with press, with influencers, and now the brand is really hot there,” she explains. “On a [random] Wednesday afternoon, there are queues down the street, so it’s really exciting.
I think the storytelling of Pandora and this idea that it’s collectible and can speak to your identity really resonates with the Japanese consumer. We’re going to open a new flagship in Kyoto next year.”
In September, the brand will launch a brand-new platform called Voices. Where Wonders is about craft and is designed by the brand’s in-house designers, tapping a creative collaborator like Lambert to bring it to life, Voice will be a full product collaboration, working with a creative talent to design the creative,” Farmer says. “There’s so much more [in the pipeline], but I’m very excited about that.”