A round-up of the best new experiences and campaigns we’ve seen on our travels. Here’s what you need to know about.
Go bold or go home – Adidas, Gentle Monster, Louis Vuitton and H&M new store openings are worth talking about
At a time when high street closures are really hitting the headlines you can’t forget the importance of investing and experimenting in your physical estate – especially flagships. We’ve picked out four brands experimenting, being bold, providing fresh, new memories and high feel-good. First up – Adidas just opened its new Oxford Street flagship – its most digital store to date. This space fuels exploration – from the show-stopping entrance display to the lifts (which feel like you’re in a cool high rise) that get you upstairs. The store oozes desire in its trendy, fashion-led sections and customisation area; gets you immersed in ‘your run style’ with Running Lab and gets you feeling proud to belong to London with all the local touches. The VM is impressive, there are digital screens everywhere that are so huge and vibrant that the whole place has a feeling of energy. The digital changing room mirror is how to do easy in a memorable way – recognising which garments you come into the changing room with automatically so you can quickly ask for more sizes! On top of all that the staff reflect the passion and energy around this store whilst being a human friendly and approachable face in a high-tech space.
Memory-making Adidas LDN store
You won’t miss Louis Vuitton’s revamped London store – it’s a colourful marvel inside and out! Whilst most luxury Fashion brands dial up desire with paired-back, minimalist design, the brand has decided to go all-out on creating a feeling of happiness and we think that’s just what the UK needs right now! Keen to design more than just a shop and a space that wasn’t intimidating, could this ‘travel destination’ set the future bar for Luxury?
Louis Vuitton New Bond Street
H&M have launched two new stores of stark contrast. In Berlin it’s having a stab at going ‘hyper-local’ with Mitte Garten. Here H&M hopes to “offer a neighbourhood store serving as a platform for local and global talents within retail, culture and art”. The store has a vegetarian café, garden and boasts many talks and events! Whilst in Birmingham, H&M takes its Home concept outside of London for the first time and revamps its Bullring mecca! The brand has created an impressively stylish haven for home inspiration that goes far beyond what you might expect from this mass clothing retailer.
H&M Mitte Garten and H&M Birmingham
Gentle Monster takes eyewear to new heights with its latest store opening in Shanghai. If you haven’t been to a Gentle Monster store before we really would recommend – oodles of Desire, Immersion and Freedom. This is a customer experience you need to feel for yourselves. It breaks all the rules and is so intriguing you can’t help but wander in!
% ARABICA stirs up UK coffee market
Yes, we hear you…. yet another coffee chain… yawn…. But wait, this is quite a big deal. % Arabica already had 42 outlets globally with a big cult following. Its launch in the UK (with two new London stores) has come with much anticipation and it’s quickly made its way to the list of top London coffee shops. This experience is all about the coffee and the founder’s passion for creating it (they roast and produce it themselves). You get that impression as soon as you experience the stylish, clean, paired-back interior and menu. This is about letting the coffee speak for itself. It feels uber desirable and different. Most other trendy coffee shops capture a local, home-grown, quirky sentiment. Whilst here you get amazing coffee in a cup with the massive % logo on it to show just how trendy you are! Definitely one to watch!
And we’re off – Argos gets us all nostalgic as Christmas adverts roll
You’ll have to wait until our latest Christmas Unwrapped report is out to get the customer verdict on who’s won the battle of the Christmas ads, but right now we’re loving the feeling we get from the Argos Christmas advert. We can connect with this on so many levels – the nostalgic Argos catalogue (renamed ‘Book of Dreams) we all used to circle as kids at Christmas, that amazing song from the carefree 80s which takes us back to those goose bumps we got from The Breakfast Club, and that special bond of Dad and kid that’s often overlooked in campaigns. Can’t wait to see how it compares to all the others.
Lego makes us feel good about doing good – just in time for Christmas
Turns out we have a massive attachment to these iconic plastic bricks – Lego estimates a whopping 97% of consumers keep or share their bricks rather than throw them away. How many of us fall guilty to having some in the attic?! In its attempts to ‘share the power of play’ Lego has just launched a pilot reuse platform called Lego Replay in the US. People simply send off their bricks for free, which get sorted and cleaned and fed back into community projects so more kids can get new joy out of the bricks. Easy and feel-good. Lego are surely onto a winner. We wish more brands would think about the ‘ending’ they’re creating in their CX.
The brand has also launched a new iconic collectable which definitely chimes with desire for more ‘sustainable’ materials versus plastic. Its iconic mini figure has been given a wooden makeover! It’s only available in a Covent Garden pop up at the moment, but launches globally on 8 November. We think it’s going to make it to the top of many Christmas lists!
