Reigniting Retail -Your Paint Personality

When shocked at the figures of how quickly our high street home improvement stores will decline in the near future, I set myself the challenge of designing a new interactive pop-up experience that combines the individuality of paint colours and the people that are seeking them.

The goals

I set out by making a list of goals that I wanted this experience to achieve, being sure to consider the possible long term effects: 

• Encourage visitors into stores

• Build brand loyalty

• A memorable emotive experience

• Higher social media engagement

The solution

We will have a large interactive experience in shopping centres with B&Q or Homebase stores nearby, where visitors enter through the front door and take a quiz to find their 'Paint Personality'. Completion will result in a screen taking on the environment of a room painted and accessorised with their colour. After taking a photo which can be shared through socials, they'll get a small paint pot keychain that has a discount coupon only to be used in store.

Here are some of the reasons this strategy works for our situation: 

• A large colourful interactive stall in the middle of a shopping centre floor grabs the attention of shoppers, making them want to find out more about who is running the experience. Even if they don’t have time to complete the full experience, they will still receive the exposure and real life connection to the brand, leaving with more insight than they had prior to their visit to the brand experience. 

• Including the interactive elements of the quiz, followed by the result of having an environment that changes depending on your quiz outcome builds excitement and leaves a positive emotional memory with your visitors. This creates a personal connection with a brand they’ll remember and want to engage with more, ultimately leading to a higher chance of their conversion into a paying customer. 

• Cultivating and nurturing a community online is essential to keeping possible customers entertained and invested in your brand. By providing an experience that encourages them to share online, you are also encouraging them to be an advocate for your company. By sharing pictures and videos from visiting the experience, they’re creating very valuable content for you which will be further trusted by others online as it’s coming from an organic source. 

The inspiration

When trying to decide how this experience should appear, I knew I wanted it to look open and exciting from a distance. To achieve this I needed to use clear walls and bright colours. I took to sources such as Behance, Pinterest and Dribble to look at examples of interactive experience pop up stores to see what was designed well and what learnings I could take from what existed already. I found myself drawn to images that included large clear walls so people can see what was going on inside, as well as those with open plan layouts, so all the colours and interactive elements wouldn’t be hidden as people approach it. Here are some more examples of designs I felt were leading me on the right track. 

The design

I headed to MidJourney to help me visually brain dump all the thoughts I had for the look and feel of this pop up. After some refining I came down to two images that paved the way for my scamping process. One modern looking visual, with a clear surrounding but bright colour background and a screen for easy navigation and a simple interface. While the other visual focused heavily on the colours, with the outer walls translucent and the inside containing multiple sections of colour matched items against coloured walls.

I decided I would want to expand the space portrayed, to allow for comfortable movement and interaction with a changing digital background. Also as this is about home improvement, increasing space allows for placement of furniture items that makes it clear this interactive activity is about home personalisation. When it came to the coupon, I steered clear of the usual paper format and went for a small coloured paint pot keychain depending on the outcome of the quiz, with a barcode on the side. This not only works because visitors get an exclusive deal, but also because the token itself is a reminder of the experience that will last.

In these drawings, I have created a combination of the two generated images by designing a larger cylindrical space that is open on both sides to allow for easy entrance and viewing. I've designed one side of the pop up dedicated to taking the quiz and viewing your personalised digitally projected living area in your colour, while the other side is aimed at sharing fun tips on ways to improve your wellbeing through adding different colours to your home in creative ways. 

The outcome

Personalised brand experience - Customers will enjoy feeling special through having a custom interactive experience that stays with them, while also giving them a sense of belonging with the brand. This triggers emotions similar to the feeling of getting assigned a house by the Harry Potter sorting hat! This helps their online communities keep growing and interacting with the brand, as well as creating and sharing their own organic content, which in turn helps the company further their social reach.

Higher retail footfall - Giving visitors an in-store redeemable coupon keeps them shopping in your stores, which keeps their brand loyalty with you and strengthens it. There are plenty of promotional codes online, so having something physical that needs to be redeemed physically creates an enticing exclusivity as part of the experience. 

Want to create a memorable brand experience?

If you like what you’ve heard above, and think this is the next step for your business, contact us today. We’ll develop a killer strategy to make your brand shine, then give you the tools to make the best use out of the results. Let us coach you through new ways to grow your online community and in person presence by contacting us today.