The Customer-Brand Connection That Pop-Up Shops Develop

Alondra Santamaria | May 5, 2021 at 7:30 AM

Your Favorite Brand Has A Surprise For You

Imagine walking down the streets of Paris and finding a beautiful flower shop, but wait… when you focus your attention a little bit more, you see the logo of your favorite designer brand. You may think "Impossible! Since when does my favorite designer bag brand sell flowers?” Well, my friend, it is most likely that you have found yourself in front of a pop up shop!

These creative pop up shops are catching consumers’ eyes by the second since it is a new and exciting way to get your brand out there. It can be described as an experience rather than a normal shopping day. In this blog, Hollywood Branded explores the customer-brand connection that pop-up shops develop.

The Benefits Of Opening Up A Pop-Up Shop

In an age where there is a deluge of information coming out of social media, it may seem impossible for a brand to compete, which is why they need to try harder than ever to stand out. This is where pop-up shops come in hand!

You may be wondering what exactly a pop-up shop is. Fortunately, we can answer that! A pop-up shop is a temporary retail space that brands set up to provide their customers with an immersive experience to get to know them and their products even more. There are a lot of benefits to opening one, especially now that they can receive worldwide exposure in a relatively easy manner. These benefits include:

Saving money: Since the rent for the space is temporary you will be cutting down what you usually pay in rent for a permanent place.
An opportunity to test the market: It enables you to analyze how well products do and seek for real customer feedback.
Increase brand awareness: Pop-up shops give tremendous attention to your brand since it is being seen in an unconventional practice all while it attracts major attention on social media.
Create excitement: When customers know that an event like this will take place, they get excited and are willing to even camp outside the shop, which shows and even fosters brand loyalty.
Create brand culture: By participating in creative strategies like this, customers start building a new and fun image for the brand.

But enough of the valuable and factual stuff… let’s take a look at some examples!

Gucci Psychedelic Pin

Gucci, a high end fashion brand, created a pop-up shop concept called “Gucci Pin”, which originated from the idea of pinning locations on your smartphones or computers’ maps. Each pop-up shop has its own theme and exclusivity. Back in February 2020, they dropped the pin at Selfridges Corner Shop in London to introduce their psychedelic inspired collection. Consumers could find the pin on Google Maps and once they arrived, they enjoyed a room filled with mirrors, neon signs, glitter balls, and red lights all to give an overall trippy effect - perfect for selfies and brand exposure on social media.

Gucci Pin Pop-Up Shop

Pantone Café

There is nothing like going into an aesthetically pleasing café to snap those perfect Instagram pictures! That is why Pantone, one of the most renowned color experts in the world, created a pop-up café on the shores of the French Riviera with color-coded sandwiches, salads, snacks, pastries, water bottles, napkins, chairs... basically everything! This was such a success that they continued opening this café for a couple of summers afterwards. This creative and bold presentation elevated the consumers’ senses, which obviously resulted in them posting on their social media platforms for their followers to enjoy as well.

Pantone Cafe Pop-Up Shop in France

Jacquemus Pop-Up Flower Shop

On a more recent note, Jacquemus, French fashion designer, opened a pop-up flower shop in Paris to announce the start of Spring. This pop-up was only open for a week, allowing customers to come in and buy floral arrangements wrapped in Jacquemus’ fabric from past collections. This pop-up shop not only benefited this brand, but it also helped the flower shop in partnership, Fleurs de Paul, to increase its exposure. It also focused on upcycling, something that the designer finds very valuable. This creative and collaborative event made quickly its way to TikTok giving it the attention it needed and inviting other people to attend the shop.

Jacquemus Flower Pop-Up Shop in Paris

Taco Bell Pop-Up Hotel

Back in 2019, Taco Bell had the great idea of opening “The Bell,” a Taco Bell-themed hotel in Palm Springs, California. This was a four day experience in the V Palm Springs Hotel that included happy hours, DJs, hot yoga, movies, branded manicures and pedicures, merchandise, pool parties with live music performances, and, of course. Taco Bell food for days. The prices ranged from $169 to $299 a night. This initiative not only appealed to regular Taco Bell fans, it also lured in the big influencers like Jeffree Star, which only meant that millions of other people would know about it with a simple click on an influencer’s post.

Taco Bell Pop-Up Hotel in Palm Springs

Google Home Mini or Donuts?

When Google launched the Google Home Mini they promoted it by opening pop-up donut shops in the U.S and Canada. They collaborated with local donut bakers to provide donuts and put them in a conveyor belt that would also carry some Google Home Minis, since they are the size of a donut. When the customers would come in they would ring a bell and ask the Home Mini a question, then a small box would be dispensed and the customer would either receive a delicious donut or a Home Mini.

Louis Vuitton Vibrant Pop-Ups

Lastly, to celebrate the Spring-Summer 2021 Men’s collection, Louis Vuitton opened a bright pop-up experience on Rodeo Drive. The collection is based on "new looks made from recycled material, looks repeated from the Fall-Winter 2020 collection, looks freely created by the studio during the lockdown using recycled material, and new looks created from existing ideas." (Virgil Abloh, creative director for LV). Thus, the pop-up shop portrayed that exact idea. To make it interactive, guests could scan QR codes to activate snapchat filters and post them on their social media platforms.

Louis Vuitton Pop-Up Shop in Rodeo Drive

Making THE Connection

All in all, brands thinking outside the box and giving people unconventional ways in which they can consume their product can prove to be beneficial. People like to be surprised and by opening up pop-up the brand will secure a connection with the consumer that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do in a normal customer journey.