media update’s Aisling McCarthy chatted to Hason-Moore about which brands are best suited to using pop-up shops.

Please briefly explain how pop-up stores work?

Pop-up stores bring brand worlds to life in 4D, as though the audience were stepping into a television commercial. They generally dramatise a key brand benefit and create a “one of a kind” experience that allows an audience to engage with the brand in a new way.

Take the Magnum Pleasure Stores for example, to dramatise the brand idea of ‘chocolate and ice cream pleasure’ fans engaged with a ‘naked vanilla Magnum’ and chose their chocolate coating and toppings.

Many of the best current pop-up stores have created experiences that allow an audience to personalise products that usually come factory packed, while creating a magical environment (a world away from the grocery store fridge or shelf).

We like to create environments that work as ‘social media studios’ for user-generated digital engagement, so bespoke ‘Instagram’ opportunities, interactive digital technology, and “Disneyland-esque” experiences and photo-booths are also part of our bag of tricks.

Our stores combine high-end interior design, experiences that dramatise a key benefit, and charming, extrovert, staff selected and scripted so that the experience is like walking into a glamorous and fun ‘live advert’.

What sort of brands are best suited to using pop-up stores?

Food brands, and specifically ‘treat’ brands, are always great. Our ‘Play with Oreo’ Cafe, Magnum Stores, and Cadbury Dairy Milk’s ‘World of Marvellous Creations’ all had massive queues and drove social media crazy with ‘Instagrammable’ food shots.

Almost any brand can use the power of the pop-up store for a launch campaign or as a new way of integrating live experience and digital engagement. The experiences we create are, generally, amongst the most popular experiences in any given year, and every brand loves being the topic of conversation.

The other day, I was chatting to someone about our Oreo Café (from three years ago) and they whipped out their phone and showed me photos stored on it of their family on our giant wire car. They said, “My son keeps asking me when is it coming back?”. I think only great sponsorship properties generate that level of brand love.

Have you noticed success with a specific demographic?

The audience that you draw is specific to the product and, to a degree, the mall or street that you activate the pop-up in. We have to source locations that will draw the target audience that our brands have asked us to engage with.

We keep guest books and can track engagement in the digital space (where we always trend), so we are able to show our clients the, generally, very diverse audiences that we attract. Rather than a specific demographic, it’s probably easier to explain the audience pychographically as ‘on-trend’ influencers in their own circles.

With the economy slowing down, pop-up stores seem to be becoming more popular with businesses. What do they offer that traditional brand campaigns cannot?

What differentiates a pop-up campaign from most other brand experiences is that pop-ups combine sampling with sales.

We are able to sell products at a premium (often twice what they would cost in a store) because of the added experience. We are also able to sell branded merchandise, which means that we can partially subsidise the cost of the campaign in a way very few forms of marketing (outside of sponsorship) can.

And what separates a pop-up store from sponsorship is that the brand itself is the hero rather than the ‘rock star’ or the ‘sports hero’.

Which have been the most successful pop-up campaigns you have worked on?

All of our pop-up stores, to date, have been hugely successful - touch wood. Our Magnum Pleasure Stores are probably the stores most people find us through - the three-hour queues were a real talking point at the time.

Our ‘Play with Oreo’ store was probably the most successful example of a studio for user-generated content. It was the local launch idea for a global campaign “Play with Oreo” and we out-trended every Oreo country, including the US.

Oreo ran a global ‘user-generated hub’ on a micro-site, inviting their audience in more than 100 countries to send in “Play with Oreo” content and 80% of that content in the first few weeks came from our store.

My personal favourite pop-up, to date, would have to be the Jacobs Board Game Café – 1 000 board games, free coffee, and people aged three to 90 connecting in a magical ‘board game’ themed space.

What are the major pros and cons of pop-up stores?

Pros - Brand love, digital engagement, sales growth over the campaign (and direct sales that subsidise the activity)

Cons - Location is key, and the best locations are, generally, already taken, so sourcing the right space is a process. Which means that brands need to be flexible with campaign timings. Good stores are almost as much about the interior design as they are about the experience, so you need a proper budget.

When considering a location for your pop-up store, how do you know what is the best choice?

For pop-ups, where direct sales are important, you need a super-regional mall. One of the big 5. For pop-ups where ‘digital engagement’ and brand love are the key campaign measurables - we look for streets where the coolest people in our audience are already playing.

For more information, visit www.mbongiworks.co.za.

Interested in different marketing approaches? Read more in our article, Experiential marketing – what’s it all about?