What a great way to get people interacting with a piece of advertising. This 60 foot video installation challenges passers by to race against Ryan Hall the U.S. marathon runner.

There’s been a lot of news recently about Topshop beaming down in Chicago, but putting the US to one side for a moment, what about Chile?

Topshop has had outposts in the country’s Paris department stores for some years now, but the first standalone shop only opened in the middle of last month.

Located in the Alto Las Condes mall in Santiago, the new store’s arrival has been trumpeted across the city, and in the upscale shopping centre itself the prime public area has been taken over by a Topshop and London-themed installation. From the outside this modestly sized, single-floor shop has everything that you would expect, with the familiar logo standing proud of the shopfront and the two full-height glass windows containing three modishly dressed mannequins a piece.

In the early days of the Internet, online retailing itself was an innovation. Online retailers were an amazing departure from catalogs, mail order, and brick and mortar stores, offering consumers a new option for buying goods (sometimes in their pajamas). But the honeymoon has been over for a long time now, and if online retailers want to succeed these days, they have to deliver. Whether it’s through innovative marketing or knock-your-socks-off amazing customer service, these online retailers are making a difference and making things work in a really smart way. Read their stories, and get inspired by their innovation at work. 

The success of a mobile game.

Many people know that Angry Birds is one of the most popular mobile games available. Created by the software and games company Rovio a few years back the success of the game now sees the company valued at over $1Billion USD.

No… this blog isn’t going to be a homage to infographics. But we couldn’t resist posting up this one.   If you work at an agency, can you find yourself?        

When we work in the digital space it’s not all about marketing, we’ve always been a believer that the most useful of devices connect with people in way that lasts far longer.

How do you re-invent the thermostat? It’s a piece of technology that exists in most households. Wether you have airconditioning or central heating, the look and function of the device hasn’t altered a great deal for the last 50 years. A simple mercury switch that engages your heating or cooling system, you set the temperature and hey presto… It just works, why change it?

Not exactly a digital story but, hey it’s all marketing.

Remember the spike of outdoor branding we called gorilla marketing around 2000-2003. The biggest single form of gorilla marketing took the form of pavement stencilling. It didn’t take long for Councils around Australia to shut this kind of marketing down on the basis that the inks used either caused damage to the pavement or we’re classed as semi-permanent.

Sales. An integral part in every retailers calendar, so why so often do they become an excuse for some stores to leave their windows baron and their merchandise shabby?
 
The word SALE plastered across a window no longer has the same impact as it once did, largely because at least half a dozen retailers will be on sale at any one time in the year. So that sense of urgency, that excitement of an ‘event’ has less impact. That coupled with the rise of online shopping where Australians have become wise to the fact they can buy for less over the internet has again diluted the impact of our traditional sale.
 
However, markdowns are a fact of retail life and getting ‘clean’ in preparation for new stock is as much part of the calendar as anything else. The way retailers approach the matter of clearance, however, varies widely, and for some – think Harrods – it is a highly marketable event just like any other promotion. And it’s only once a year so still has that prestige status.
 
So what’s the best way to present a mark-down sale? How can we bring innovation to our windows and visual merchandising? Here are just a few examples of how some stores skin that cat:

The integrated window display at London’s One New Change shopping centre was erected overnight and allows shoppers to purchase groceries on their mobile phones, then have them delivered to their door.
 
The move gives Ocado its first physical presence on the high street.
 
The shopping wall mirrors an experiment by Tesco earlier this year in South Korea. Tesco circulated footage of how a shopping wall would work in a subway, prompting consumer excitement.

Luxury fashion retailer Net-a-Porter.com made its first move into bricks-and-mortar last night with an augmented reality pop-up window shop.

It opened two stores, one on Mount Street in London and the other on Mercer Street in New York, that allowed customers to scan pictures of products on the wall using their phones, and buy or win the items.

The stores were open for one night as part of Vogue’s Fashion Night Out event. After downloading the Window Shop application, which has augmented reality technology called Aurasma embedded, customers’ mobile phones were able to recognise product images.