SK-II Event Deployments
During my time at Huge and SK-II we deployed our “phygital” experiences not only in Shanghai and Tokyo, but in various other locations as well. I will describe these below together with the unique challenges they provided.
CIIE
In 2020 SK-II gave the responsibility to Huge to develop their presence at the Chinese International Import Expo. The booth was to contain the best of the Confetti experience deployed in 2019, with a new look to match the rest of the Procter and Gamble booth.
Having worked in China before the team was ready for the unique challenges to working in that country, and though the cultural and physical languages were still there, we were better prepared for them.
I joined the project as a QA Lead, but I was to be the one responsible for deploying the whole experience. I flew to Wuxi in Chinas to oversee the construction of the booth in a warehouse there, test the integration, and then perform the integration again on-site. This deployment wasn’t made easier by the Chinese secret service keeping a close eye on all foreign visitors and in many cases not allowing foreigners to perform certain tasks. The experience was deployed together with the opening of the Expo and received over 1000 visitors per day.
San Francisco Innovation Lab
The SF lab was to be a showcase for SK-II and all the technology they developed together with Huge. Retail partners were to be invited to the space to be inspired by the Smart Store concepts. The biggest challenge of this project was the “archeology” of digging up past projects and making them work again, something I was set up to do with my previous experiences from all SK-II deployments. The lab is still open and fully functional as of Q2 2020.
Cannes
In the Cannes Lions Festival everyone is fighting for the visitors attention, but Huge’s tech was able to impress. I traveled to southern France to oversee the deployment of Huge’s moments in the P&G booth. One of these moments was the brand new “smart shelf” that can track even the glancing eyes of someone walking past and capture their attention by shining a light on exactly the product they were looking at. SK-II was a corner stone of P&G’s presence at the Lions Festival and we made a lasting impression on the visiting audience.
Isetan
One of the biggest challenges during my time at Huge was a deployment that had to happen in less than 6 hours. 6 hours isn’t the entire truth, we did have a week in a warehouse outside of Tokyo to practice the deployment, but once we were in the prestigious Isetan mall (think Nordstroms) we only had 6 hours to build the entire structure, integrate all technology and make sure it’s all still working. Also these 6 hours were the hours between midnight and 6:00am.
The mall did open on time, and we were 100% ready! Thousands of visitors came through our experience in the short week it was open and it generated a ton of buzz on social media.
CES
For a Swede from small town Linköping to travel to Las Vegas to work on the show floor of CES was an insane experience. The competition between different brands to grab visitors attention was fierce, but thanks to Huge’s tech, that was not an issue for SK-II. Users were treated to a fully featured but scaled down version of our Future X experience from Shanghai. There was a constant line outside the booth and we even got the attention from some key influencers and celebrities that visited the booth.
Media & Accolades
Isetan Photoshoot:
