December 11, 2012

Saks Fifth Ave. and Starbucks were among those pushing the boundaries of interactive storefront displays to captivate passers-by in high-traffic locations. EBay introduced interactive store windows in New York City and San Francisco encouraging holiday shoppers to make charitable donations to Toys for Tots by scanning a QR code. Displays fronting Starbucks stores in Toronto and Vancouver encouraged passers-by to assemble their favorite Tazo teas using gesture controls via a vinyl screen and projector, while Saks and Stylelist.com tapped downtown agency Gin Lane Media to create a three-window display featuring 64 iPad 2s and nine 27-inch flat-panel Cinema Displays for the high-end retailer’s flagship Fifth Avenue store. The display featured original imagery, streaming content, tweets from around the Web and user-submitted photos with the #StylelistatSaks hashtag. Running a native iPad application built specifically for the installation on a local network, all the iPads were able to talk “to each other to produce elegant fades and control what device should display,” said Gin Lane’s Digital Creative Director Dan Kenger.