Beacon Creative’s Carol Feeley shares her top festive retail picks.
It’s been another year of falling footfall across UK high streets, innovative retailers are responding to the challenge of enticing customers in-store with a combination of digital and physical touchpoints.
Beacon Creative’s Carol Feeley has collated her top festive retail picks…
Tiffany Pop Up
Tiffany recently opened its concept store in Covent Garden with a new take on luxury. Featuring a vending machine selling Tiffany’s latest fragrance and an area for jewellery engraving and leather embossing. Customers can personalise their purchases, and participate in the creative process by drawing images on a flat screen which can then be transferred to pendants or other engravable objects, improving the customer journey from browsing to purchase.
The fragrance pop up at St Pancras also features the vending machine, as well as a 43ft Christmas tree and Tiffany box robot.
Fenwick
Fenwick Newcastle unveiled its annual Christmas window featuring The Snowman. Each window tells the story of the Snowman, complete with Motorbike and snowman party.
The story continues in-store, with Snowman gifts, limited edition plush and a rooftop cinema experience in partnership with Barbour. Another great example of transferring a brand from window display into an experience for children and parents.
Sky Ocean Rescue | Pass on Plastic
Project 0 and Sky Ocean Rescue’s Pass On Plastic is back in Carnaby with another pop-up in support of eliminating single-use plastics. The #PassOnPlastic Reusable Range is designed to help you stop using the top five worst culprits of single-use plastic in your everyday life.
The range includes reusable bottles and coffee cups, 100% organic tote bags, on-the-go cutlery wraps and beeswax wraps. Each artwork in the range has been designed by a celebrity icon, including Kate Moss, Harry Kane and Cara Delevingne. Everything from the pop-up shop will be recycled, and customers are encouraged to interact with the brand and add a pledge to the message wall. All proceeds will go to Sky UK’s ocean health partners.
Selfridges
Selfridges Rocks Christmas with its Rock and Roll tribute featuring Santa dressed in an assortment of rock outfits. A performer billed as the ‘Rock Santa’ took part in the unveiling of Selfridges department store’s Christmas window display.
In-store, Selfridges has partnered with FAO Schwarz to reveal a pop up, complete with piano dance mat to entice customers in-store.
Topshop
One of our favourites this year, Topshop’s neon window certainly caught the attention of passersby. The journey continued instore with huge vintage inspired Christmas lights and a larger than life snow globe. Customers can hop inside and collect as many confetti tokens as possible to trade for prizes.
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren showcased its latest range with giant 6ft teddy bears. Celebrating its 50th anniversary the brand continues to adapt to a challenging retail environment.
One of many brands diversifying and offering food and beverage brand extensions, the store features ‘Ralph’s Coffee’ on Regent Street.
Christmas apparel trends
Dinosaurs in Santa hats, unicorns tangled in Christmas lights and sequin overload, we’ve collated our favourite apparel from the UK high street, you can see it here.
Carol Feeley is creative manager at Beacon Creative – an independent brand design consultancy, working with worldwide brands on a daily basis, which believes that at the heart of every good brand communication is a great idea. She can be contacted on 0191 478 4411 or by clicking here.
