At Walmart alone there is said to be more than 600 different Avengers themed items for sale. Walmart (in the US) in partnership with Marvel Entertainment has driven in-store engagement with an Augmented Reality game that has shoppers playing an Avengers game throughout their local Supercentre. The “Super Hero AR” application can be downloaded from both the Apple App Store and the Android Market.

Once installed the shopper is to hunt for various Avengers point of purchase elements strategically placed throughout the store. Without visiting the store the player only has access to one character (Hawkeye). Additional characters are unlocked by hitting the aisles and playing in your local store. The placement of the POP throughout the store drives traffic to a host of key departments including apparel, grocery, toys and wireless where Avengers licensed products are featured.

By pointing their smart phones at the Avengers merchandising elements, new powers are unlocked in the game play. Once all five powers have been collected the player can defeat Loki and save the world in the final level.

Beyond the gaming portion of the app, shoppers can activate their phones “photo capture mode” by scanning the Avengers pallet display allowing them to virtually pose beside 3D animations of their favourite character.

Looking to capture as many steps on the path to purchase the mobile application was also able to engage with the Walmart circular and a custom micro-site that when scanned opened additional features of game play.

“Walmart is bringing this summer’s most anticipated blockbuster into stores through a first-of-its-kind augmented reality experience which bridges the gap between the physical store and mobile gaming,” Seong Ohm, senior vice president and general merchandise manager for entertainment, Walmart U.S., said in a release. “We’re committed to creating engaging and fun experiences at Walmart.”

Walmart will be that little bit more treturous over the next few weeks as science fiction crime fighters battle to save the planet in aisle four.

All of these pieces are made completely to full scale using nothing but cardboard, tape and glue.

Coming from an organization that tries to do interesting things with corrugated materials, this work is simply breathtaking in its precision and artistry. See more of his works here.

Upon entering the store you were prompted to push a big red shiny button that starts the timer on your shopping experience. Once pressed you are issued a ticket (strangely out of Usain Bolt’s mouth) that time stamps the beginning of your shopping challenge.

A mad dash ensues as you scream at staff “Bring this to me in size…”, and once the kicks are in your hands a bolt to the check out is required.

At the cash register, once you had completed your shopping trip, you slam a second button to complete the cycle and a ticket with your “stop” time is issued.

Complete the challenge in 10 minutes get 5% off, 5 minuted get 10% off, 4 minutes get 15% off and 3 minutes get 20% off.

Love it.

Supporting a global movement led by Humane Society International this campaign coincides with World Week for Animals in Laboratories running from April 21 — 29.

Store staff have taken to the entry way of Lush’s stores encouraging shoppers to sign the petition against animal testing. Shoppers are encouraged to show their support by signing the windows with grease pencils. A number of locations held mock demonstrations of what happens behind the lab doors to highlight the cruelty. Here is a video of one such window in London, UK.

Support this cause by signing this petition here, and by shopping for your cosmetics at Lush.

Each shade will be made available in both coated and uncoated formats.

Here’s a few of my favourite examples.

Gap Kids

Target

This ad has run entitled — Color Changes Everything.

Brought to life in-store with this fantastic piece designed by our friends at Knock.

Neither of these examples are overly complicated yet they bring such vibrancy to the spaces.

Love it.

The announcement of the pairing of Pantone with Sephora (a leading beauty specialty retailer) makes perfect sense. Sephora is the exclusive retailer for the Pantone Universe Beauty Collection. To launch the partnership a pop-up store that mimicked their iconic Pantone Colour Guide.

The retail format is portable and will have two placements in Manhattan and Los Angeles.

The project was devised and executed by Boston-based agency Almighty.

As you pick up various footwear and bring them into proximity of the reader, content relevant to the specific shoe is featured on the integrated screen.

A number of years ago we did some experimentation for a product line for Adidas that allowed the consumer to select from three models of Adicolor shoes. When the RFID tag was taken away from the reader, content for that shoe would be shown on screen. Furthermore, you could customize the Adicolor shoe the way you’d like it before purchasing and then be able to send the mocked-up version to your email inbox.

This begs a question which we tried to solve for another client, Athletes World. How can you eliminate the wait and often the disappointment around the question “Do you have this in my size”? If the at-shelf level reader were mapped to the stores POS system, could you not let the shopper know virtually instantly if the shoe is or isn’t available and if not provide recommendations and alternatives. Sadly the project never flew, but the idea and the concept was sound.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled for this solution, but in the meantime, nice work New Balance and Almighty.

The clean illustations tell the tale of a couple falling in love and elements are sequenced from the window to areas throughout the store.

It will remain in-store through June 2012.

Happy to be back behind the keyboard spending a little time on the blog again, I’ve been building up a bank of stories and ideas. It appears to be RFP season again and let’s just say that has eaten into a lot of my more recreational writing.

Additionally, we returned from Globalshop this year with seven really nice pieces of hardware in appreciation for the work done in the last year for a few great partners. You’ll see a list of them added to our awards listing on the site shortly.

Upon returning from Vegas it was right off to the Canadian Shopper Marketing Forum held in Toronto, that was a great few days with engaging speakers and learning’s.

I had the privilege to take part as both a speaker and a participant at Pepsico Canada’s 2012 Merchandising Summit with representative from Brazil, Mexico, the US and Canada.

All of these events underline the continued attention and focus that this portion of the “marketing mix” is receiving.

There has been so many exciting developments around the world specifically about shopper marketing and merchandising this year and I’m excited to get back to highlighting some of them here.

What an honour to take this home to all of our great team members and for our incredible client Sanford Canada (Newell Rubbermaid).

Click here for the official press release.

Here is a great one from three gentleman who operate a development company called Agile Route and specifically their Shopperception application.

Using the Kinects incredibaly accurate ability to track gesture and movements, the Shopperception application makes retail observations without the consumer having to be interrupted with clumsy hardware strapped to their head as in many other similar research solutions. No data other than movement is collected which does not overstep any lines of confidentiality. Multiple shoppers can be observed at the same time allowing for real world shopping scenarios. Metrics can be observed, tracked and reported on with complete ease, making this effectively a real world in-store version of Google analytics.

Have you used technology to test your products in-store? How about testing your merchandising strategies?

This program was designed by award winning surface and interior design firm Giles Miller Studio based out of London.

The following video is a collaboration between Sesame Street and the band Ok Go. This fun little piece does a great job explaining some simple colour principles of what happens when you mix primary colours. (Thanks to SwissMiss)

I hope this video brightened your day a little too.

Takes place in 20 US cities, how about one in Toronto? The Colour Run

Colour and Marketing.

Colour and Branding.

Colour and the Consumer.

Other Influences and Overall Design.

The Element of Time.

Power Words.

I have to admit after following it very closely this year,CES (Consumer Electronics Show) didn’t seem to deliver it’s usual punch of hype and ensuing drool flood for gadget freaks. Frankly, I think we are all waiting to see what happens with the home television market and what some companies (*cough* Apple) will do.

It’s almost universally agreed that the television screen is still the central hub of “group” home content consumption, and that the television remains a relevant piece of hardware albeit suffering a personality crisis at the moment.

With that in mind, what did impress was Samsung’s transparent LCD Smart Window which was awarded a CES 2012 Innovation Award. Retailers take note. Imagine the possibilities of “on glass” interactivity and content aligned to window merchandising.

Take your average fashion retailers store window, now put some mannequins in the window (dress them), punch it up with some visually compelling decor elements and you’ve created the standard for today’s window shopper.

Now add a smart screen component in order to visual overlay content in front of the traditional display and you can offer a myriad of new ways to attract and engage. Textures, lighting, depth, motion as well as access to information such as couponing, online content, sales and special offers. That’s just the tip of this almighty iceberg, the options are countless.

Pretty exciting and I look forward to seeing the convergence of retail decor and digital interactivity.

Historically, it’s been an argument between printed signage and/or digital signage in a retailers window, this technology answers that question nicely with a very neutral — both.

Terry references a recent research study that reveals that the average woman spends eight years of her life shopping. Men conversely represent only a fraction of that. Have a listen, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it — male or female.

IT people, what’s up with that face?

(Thanks Swissmiss)