The Brief

While selling online grows, Japan’s largest apparel store United Arrows Green Label Relaxing wanted to make better use of its tangible assets – and bring people into the store to experience the brand firsthand. Located in heavily trafficked areas, we decided to re-invigorate that old media of fashion – the show window. The core communication target was ‘20-something fun-seeking shoppers’ out and about looking for fashion. We aimed to strengthen brand engagement by providing consumers an interactive experience - the world’s first interactive mannequins incorporating Kinect sensor technology into a marionette. Sales promotions were included to drive sales as well as traffic.

Creative Execution

The strategy was to create a complete campaign that would engage potential customers on the street, motivate them to shop, and also encourage them to share the experience online. Target consumers are fun seekers who have a very high digital literacy. Therefore, we aimed to develop a campaign using digital and entertainment that can generate WOM in social media. In addition, we tried to strengthen brand engagement by providing the consumers with an interactive experience involving the store rather than simply showing the display.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

With the spread of online shopping in the apparel industry in recent years, fewer customers are actually making purchases in stores. As a result, people no longer “window shop.” Our objective, therefore, was twofold – one, we wanted to attract passersby to come in the store; people who are out shopping but may be just passing us by on their way to another shop. We wanted to change their behavior from pre-searched shopping to surprise and discovery shopping. Our second objective was to create buzz online to encourage new customers to come out and visit our store.

Results

The development costs of the new marionette system and mannequins totaled 80,000 US dollars. Marionettebot took consumers by surprise with its fresh combination of marionette and robotics. People lined up in front of the store, and sales at the store increased 130 percent versus a year earlier. The initiative created great buzz on SNS, with the brand’s social media share increasing by 2,812 percent compared to that before the campaign. It gained an extensive media coverage and became a great success.