Truly brilliant. So much fun.
Homeplus, Tesco’s chain of grocery stores in South Korea, wallpapers a subway station with actual images from its store shelves. While consumers wait for their train to arrive, they can shop by capture the QR code for each item and adding it to a mobile shopping cart. Orders are placed on the spot, and are delivered after they arrive home.
Consumers are the big winners here:
- After a long day, they get to look at a beautiful, expansive, mood-lifting wall of color instead of a grey wall.
- They re-capture otherwise lost time in their busy lives
- They avoid an extra trip to the grocery store and have more time to spend on family, friends relaxation, or their passions.
- Even if they were inclined to grocery shop on their mobile phones, this provides a much more practical, aesthetically pleasing experience than browsing the aisles of a grocery store on a tiny mobile screen.
And Homeplus reaps the benefits of a brilliant campaign:
- As an advertising campaign, it creates an extremely exciting brand impression and brand experience. It shows that Homeplus is an innovate brand that understands your busy life, and wants to bring a little fun along with a healthy dose of practicality to your daily routine.
- It stimulates actual sales. In the first place, people are stimulated to shop in an environment where that was previously impossible. Secondly, people are much more likely to shop on the wall (it’s a familiar way to shop) than to pull out a phone to grocery shop while waiting for the train–and even if they did, they are likely to buy more when they can see with a quick scan of the eye the items available (rather than hunting and pecking their way through phone menus).
- It’s a brilliant social marketing campaign—just begging to be talked about by every Korean who takes the subway.
Congratulations to Chiel Worldwide, South Korea, for an inspiring campaign that boosted online sales by 130 percent from November 2010 to January 2011, and increased the number of registered shoppers by 76 percent. At Cannes, Chiel won the Grand Prix in Media and Gold Lions for Direct and Outdoor for the effort.
Here’s their one-sheet on the effort:
Troubled experiences that need a little counseling ("Interventions"), great experiences that serve as role models ("Inspirations"), and curious or questionable experiences teetering on the brink of a breakdown ("Investigations"). We'll showcase smart experience strategies, great interaction design, and thoughts on transforming marketing meltdowns into model experiences. Our mission: help companies create great experiences that attract attention, convert new customers, generate engagement and cultivate loyalty. 
