PARIS — As summer winds down, Cartier is roaring back with a new campaign featuring its longest-standing ambassador — the panther.

But it’s not stately poses and the brand’s name writ large that will catch the attention in the visuals captured by London-based Norwegian photographer and director Sølve Sundsbø​.

The spotted feline will make its entrance on Monday leaping across screens at Tokyo’s famous Shibuya Crossing before taking a leap to the 580,000-square-foot “Exosphere” outer LED display of Las Vegas’ Sphere from Wednesday.

In Paris, it’s above the fountain on Place Saint-Michel, a stone’s throw from the Notre-Dame cathedral, that the panther will also appear on Monday, although bringing it to life will require scanning a QR code.

“We wanted to work on unexpected, unprecedented formats,” Cartier’s chief marketing officer Arnaud Carrez told WWD. “It’s really about surprise, about unexpectedness and Cartier is very much about finding its own way, being free-spirited, pioneering some ideas, [being] playful and dynamic.”

Other high-profile placements include London’s Piccadilly Circus, as well as billboards on the Pont-Neuf in Paris and at the Shanghai Exhibition Center.

Only portions of its cursive signature can be glimpsed as the campaign’s star pads across the screen. Likewise in still versions of the campaign, headed for billboards and print media, diptychs show the panther in poses that echo the shape of magnified letters.

For Carrez, this is a “clever and new” way to highlight a pairing that started when the Panthère bracelet-watch was introduced in 1914 and has since become “more than a motif…an emblem, a symbol, a collection as well as source of inspiration.”

Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s legendary creative director, was also famously nicknamed “la panthère.”

“We like the idea to refocus, re-showcase this emblematic bond and at the same time, when you see a paw or a glance of the panther, [or] a few elements, [in] the end it instantly evokes Cartier but it’s done in a subtle way and unprecedented way,” Carrez said.

“You have people who know Cartier and they see exactly the bond between the two and for people who don’t know so much about us, I think it will arouse curiosity,” the executive continued.

Expressing elegance and individuality as much as legacy is what made the animal win over choice human ambassadors like Zoe Saldaña, Blackpink’s Jisoo, and Timothée Chalamet, to name but a few.

Also striking is that there’s not a product in sight — at least not in this initial campaign.

“We did not want to have big products in your face from the beginning,” Carrez said. “This campaign, this brand statement is pretty much the starting point of a new creative direction.”

Further campaigns pursue the idea of the panther encountering “creations and sources of inspiration” for high jewelry designs, its eponymous Panthère collections or the Santos watch family.

The campaign’s release marks the kickoff of a “rich and diverse” second half for the Richemont-owned jeweler, he added. There will be a raft of activations, the launch of new products as well as a “Cartier Collection” exhibition in Rome, opening in November. Its exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is also ongoing.