CASE STUDY: Shopping mall K11 taps AR to draw customers in HK

Background

Hong Kong has one of the world’s most competitive retail environments with literally hundreds of shopping malls competing for share of wallet. OgilvyOne Worldwide Hong Kong set out to make K11, the world’s first Art Mall, stand out from the crowd and drive visitors during the crucial Christmas retail period.

Objective

To drive shoppers to K11 during the three weeks leading up to Christmas, whilst leveraging the brand’s core values of art, nature and people.

Execution

To reflect the brand values of K11, the agency crafted a Christmas mall display inspired by Antonio Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral. They then invited 11,000 of K11’s Facebook fans to join the festive fun by creating their own unique AR decorations to help complete Gaudi’s masterpiece – this was done using the Gaudi Golden Christmas facebook app, which was split into two stages.

Stage one involved solving a Gaudi puzzle, which then entered the player into a prize draw.

Stage two of the app let players express themselves artistically by challenging them to create their own unique AR Gaudi-inspired Christmas decoration.

On completion the decorations were instantly posted using GPS coordinates to the K11 mall. Players simply had to visit K11 to view their decoration – and thousands of others – using the free Layar AR app on their smartphone.

Results

Seamlessly blending social media, user generated content, mobile AR and offline locations, K11’s Gaudi Golden Christmas brought to life the brand’s core values to connect with customers.

Thousands of K11’s Facebook fans expressed themselves artistically during the three-week campaign period and the result was the world’s first AR Christmas display.

It was also the first campaign to let users create and interact with their own AR objects. The novelty of the AR display created a real talking point that made K11 a unique, must-visit shopping destination. 

More customers and a bigger share of wallet meant K11 celebrated a record-breaking Christmas.

Credits:

Campaign name K11’s Gaudi Golden Christmas
Agency OgilvyOne Worldwide Hong Kong
Account servicing Sandy Ling, Cody Ng
Executive creative director Shayne Pooley
Creative director Matthew Nisbet, Alvin Lim
Art director Jo Wong
Copywriter Momoko Yiu
Senior project manager Jo JH Wong
Flash developer Kaho Chow
Web developer John Yau, Tony Sun
Exposure Online