Turning Charity on its head

We all do it! We go to a shopping mall empty handed and leave with bags of shiny new things, some of us wondering what just happened and how did I afford all this!?

Brazilian advertising agency Loducca is radically encouraging a change in this habit. 'A Loja Vazia' or 'The Empty Shop' first popped up in a mall in Sao Paulo last year with the simple instruction – 'bring clothes to the shop instead of taking them from the shop'.

The reason? To collect clothes to help those in need.  An innovative new way of approaching charity and the collection of clothing donations, 'A Loja Vazia' is a sleek pop-up store that starts as literally an empty shop in the middle of a mall acting as a drop-off for donated clothing.

Stylists man the shop each day and create fashionable displays of the donated clothes as if the store were a typical high-street fashion store. The store is emptied each night ready for the next days donations and the process begins again. The result? Well, VillaLobos mall managed to collect 3.2 tons of clothes and help thousands of people in need!

Amazingly, the project has been designed as an open-source platform meaning any individual or company can access the plans, communications campaign and all other details for free!

'A Loja Vazia' has already hit the UK, with the first popping up in Manchester's Arndale in  earlier this year.

Who would of it thought, charity becoming premium!

Meet The Yard Creative, new vid for 2014

We decided that it was about time that we invested in a proper video and here is the result. All new for 2014 with our refurbished office, Steve talks about the kind of work that we do and why we like to do things a little differently. We hope you like it! Let us know....

Meet The Yard Creative! from The Yard Creative on Vimeo.

Big thanks to Dom Stuart for production and Ben Wiseman for music!

EuroShop 2014

So the growing beast that is EuroShop is here once more. And what a trip!

The sprawling mass of wears for the retail world felt endless. I mean, how many mannequins does the world really need?! 13 hanger-style halls showcased the worlds best innovations and products our weird little world has to give. It was vast.

Shifting through it was challenging (an epic 5472 Nike Fuel points gained on Sunday alone!) But don't get us wrong, look deep and you'll find some gems.

Kendu have potentially changed retail fitout forever! Using a simple banner technology that has been around for years, they have now integrated it within a system to create a space that you could realistically change the entire ambience of a store within a matter of hours! Instead of wall finishes the banner system creates the entire ambience of the space integrated within the retail system, cupboards, drawers and doors.  Add interactive lighting, magnetic panels and solid fitting structures behind the system and you have and totally changeable physical representation of your latest campaign. Genius.

Baro lighting took the lighting hall by storm. Demonstrating LED technology in such a simple, elegant and relevant way that was reminiscent of the iGuzzini set up of days gone by, they engaged and wowed visitors with every step. Clever trick too. Hiring two stands either side of the walkway and forcing visitors right through the centre of the stand by bridging at both high and low levels.

The Visplay stand once again oozed excellence and precision but with an unexpected twist this year. The stand (probably one of the biggest) was constructed of recyclable plastic storage boxes promoting Visplays ever green credentials. Their new systems have yet again set the bar another notch higher and be sure, the rest will copy.

Schweitzer went all out with their Dept 3.0. A completely different approach from Visplay, their stand was based around the experience of retail and the wonders that can be achieved in the physical world. Crossing design, PM, rollout and bespoke construction, they have definitely carved a niche for themselves. Their freestanding kiosk designs were inspired by a piece of genius! Unrestricted by plumbing needs, they turned the requirements of water volume in to a talking point that mesmerised visitors beyond belief. Something so pure in such volume looked beautiful and yet it came from necessity. 

Slightly geeky, was the dynamics of quick lay vinyl flooring from Polyflor that looked just like any normal floor but without the need to adhere it in place. Once again, great for speed of fit out and no different from any normal vinyl flooring.  

For those in food retail, Norpe have developed a super slick fresh food chiller with clever double tier display. The top for fresh, the bottom for pre-packaged, leveraging the trend of associated-quality for convenience.

Also in food, Ansorgs illuminated wine bottle holders made the product look stunning! Imagine a store with almost no ambient lighting and walls lined with these holders.....! Nice.

What really stood out though, was the divide between digital and physical. Which was strange when you consider how all the talks (most, shockingly low in content) where about the two worlds coming together to create a new experience in retail. You only had to stand back and look at the expenditure on both sectors stands to clearly see where the largest proportion of cash was being spent. The physical-worlds stands dwarfed those in the digital arena, perhaps proving the physical need and desire of the customer is still very much at the forefront of retail.

When most talked about digital it was embarrassing. Missing the key component, wonderfully highlighted by the Managing Director Leasing at ECE, Klaus Striebich, was the emotional value on the retail experience. The talk titled the future of Omichannel would yet again take us down the path of the Google bread checkout experience if they had their way. One that becomes void of human interaction and simply a box ticking exercise. If that's what the future of physical retail holds, give me a hut on a deserted island any day.

The one truly incredible integrated experience came from LK-AG. Utilising the recently launched iBeacon technology, they demonstrated the ease and beauty of proximity marketing. Whether for sales or experience alone, this technology goes past permission marketing and NFC to give real value through cross platform retail in the real world. And for £100 for 3 beacons, great value too!

At last Verifone iPhone mobile payment device was on show readily available to the masses. So perhaps the day of the cash desk is no more? Especially with rumours that Apple may be about to launch their own payment system powered by iBeacons and the new iWatch. Watch this space.

Axis Communications have teamed up with Visualise and are offering analytics through their security devices. Providing quantifiable data to help understand customer behaviour it will only be a matter of time when all stores have this integrated as part of their storer design. As Google have shown, data is key.

As always, alongside the giants were the newcomers and those challenging convention in their own way.

NUD we're displaying their beautifully simple colour flexes with an array of wonderful lamps attached. Want a cheap but visually stunning lighting feature? Why not try stringing up 50 of these up and see the impact they make!

In the 'Made in China' section, there were some beautifully crafted mannequins most noticeably the 'face-on' ones. You could have some real fun with these.

Multplx were milling around too with their super-fresh range of incredibly well designed security devices for mobile and tablets. Taking inspiration from Apple designed goods, security never looked so sexy. 

And lastly, the beautifully holistic concepts from Molo. Using paper and recycled PET, Molo has created naturally inspiring lights, screens and tables that challenge the considered normal constructions. The 3m high acoustic screen actually cut out all the noise of the show and created an area of calm in an otherwise bonkers environment.

In summary:
1. A great show not to be missed, though be prepared to dig deep to find the good stuff. 
2. The worlds of digital and physical are still massively separated
3. Never underestimate the emotional connections forged by face to face experiences

Ps apologies for the lack of our usual info sharing through twitter. One of the worlds biggest shows had no free wifi and wanted to charge 8 euros an hour! Epic fail :(

Nike 'House of Deadly' Virtual Stadium

Nike have blow our socks off again with their launch of the Hypervenom shoe range!

Buying sports gear these days is a serious matter. Brands are all about making sure you're getting your best performance from their products.

To promote the launch of it's Hypervenom soccer boot, Nike invited customers in Bangkok to trial the sports shoes by taking part in a time challenge at their virtual stadium, 'The House of Deadly'. Those brave players that accepted the challenge were subjected to the largest interactive installation in the world that tested their skills and agility using motion sensor technology and interactive projections to simulate a live soccer match. However, there were no other players, instead motion detecting spotlights that served as 'defenders' circling a player much like the opposition would. Players had to perform like pro athletes, by dribbling the ball and hit moving targets while dodging the spotlights.
Nike Hypervenom Installation from FutureDeluxe on Vimeo

The pop-up stadium was placed in Parc Paragon Bangkok,  and in the 3 days the stadium was there it attracted large crowds and a media frenzy which cleverly added to giving the player a real stadium atmosphere.

This is a fantastic example of experiential marketing. However, it's also a great example of things to come as the digital and real worlds continue to merge and what Nike have achieved with their virtual stadium is a creative feat!

If this hits the UK, we challenge you!

Noel 2013: Behind the scenes

In line with the trend of 'Surprise and Delight', we decided to take a hand-made approach to our festive gifts this season. Given that we have had a lot of interest about how the look was achieved we thought we'd write a quick blog about how the craftsman process materialised.

The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - the finished article

We decided that a lovely bottle of wine to accompany a festive meal or cheese-fest was best and after visiting a local wine merchant, Philglas & Swiggot, to discus (and taste) some recommendations we settled upon a tasty red with a spicy richness which was evocative of Christmas.

But now, how to put a TYC stamp on it? 

Well, seems as we are all about a personal service, it made sense to personalise each gift with a message, hence the wine box lid painted with blackboard paint. Next we decided upon a frosty white bottle with a festive wish etched upon it.

Calling upon some old workshop skills acquired during the golden days of university, the labels and bottle necks were masked.

 The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - preparation

 The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - masking and glue gunning

Following a lot of failed attempts we used a glue gun and a steady hand to scribe the festive wish and then lovingly spray painted each bottle in mat white.

The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - the spray booth

The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - ready for personalisation

Each bottle was accompanied with a neck label telling the story about the remarkable wine producer André Romero, which describes one mans determination to single-handedly put the unknown wine region Rasteau on the map by focusing on generating a high quality product in order to survive and thus putting him in the ring with the famous producers / big players. Something that we as TYC aim to do with every project, every day.

Thank you to those lucky people that received them. The feedback has been great.

The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - the finished article

The Yard Creative festive gift 2013 - the finished article

Job done.

Next generation coffee machine

We saw this in a recent Trendwatching report, we loved the idea and it is yet another good example of experiential marketing, hence the blog.

Basically, Dutch coffee company Douwe Egberts came up with a campaign dubbed "Bye Bye Red Eye" based on a simple idea of offering coffee to people in areas where red eye prevails.

The company took a typical coffee vending machine and installed facial recognition technology together with a mechanical barista and placed the machine in a prime position at Johannesburg’s O.R Tambo International Airport (July 2013).  

The main hook with the machine is that it has no buttons or method of payment - the currently it requires is a yawn.  Once the machine recognises a yawn then it dispenses a free coffee!

Can we have one in our office?!?!

Tapestry - enabling cross channel retailing

Ok, think about the last time you went shopping.

Did you see something you liked, but it was in the first shop you went to so you didn't buy it. You carried on, the day passed and now you haven't found anything else. You know you should go back and get that first item but now your hot, bothered, late and just want to go home.

Well now a piece of digital technology has come along that will make this moment, and more, so much easier. Tapestry.

Since fast fashion hit the high streets, individual curation of fashion has shot through the roof. The likes of Asos have fuelled this but only through one channel. Tapestry completes the ultimate fashion curators tool kit by allowing you to gather and curate whilst you shop, travel, work or at home. Watch the video above and you'll see what we mean.

Now that's clever. Gather info whilst you shop. Get inspired by mags and add that to the mix. Get alerts, discounts and rewards. And buy anytime, anywhere once you've made your mind up.

Amazing.

The guys at Tapestry are keen to expand this technology so if you're a retailer and fancy being at the forefront of cross channel digital retail, give them a call and qualify for a free trial in your store. Just like the Diesel store at Westfield.

Oh, and that first item you knew you should of bought in the first place, well now you just buy it on your way home from your Tapestry app and get it delivered the next day. That's true cross channel retailing!