Primark’s global director of licence and brands Sarah Jackson, Amanda Raposo, chief experience officer of CAMP, and founder and ceo of RWS Global Ryan Stana took to the License Global Theatre stage on day one of Brand Licensing Europe for a panel discussion on ‘Elevating Customer Experience Through Immersive Retail’.
Chaired by Veronica Hart, president of HARTstring Entertainment and chair of Licensing International’s board of directors, the discussion touched on the evolution of immersive retail, its benefits for brands, and successful strategies for creating engaging in-store experiences to drive customer traffic and loyalty.
Veronica referenced Licensed Global’s most recent global study, released in the spring, that revealed live entertainment to be one of the fastest growing sectors in licensing. “In 2025, pop-up experiences are expected to be a $50 billion business,” she said. “This is clearly where consumers and guests are looking to go, and certainly an area that has a tremendous amount of promise.”
For Primark, a bricks-and-mortar business, live activations are especially important in giving consumers a reason to make the journey to its stores. The retailer’s recent UK successes include activations with Hello Kitty (including live character appearances and branded cafés) and season four of Stranger Things (which involved the front of its flagship Birmingham store being given an Upside Down makeover), while further afield, it has seen huge engagement with its an entire floor devoted to Disney brands in its newly opened Orlando branch.
“Our environment is really important for us,” said Sarah Jackson. “We landed our first café with Disney back in 2019 in our Birmingham flagship store – it was a really big deal that’s been very successful for us. Since then, we’ve now launched numerous cafes that are on rotating themes across our UK café estate. So we’ve had Stitch, SpongeBob, the Lion King, and right now it’s Shrek… The food is amazing – very green!
“For us, it’s all about how we drive even more engagement, and how we really surprise and delight our customers. What we do know is that customers love the shareable Instagram moment, the TikTok moment, and that is really helping drive the excitement.”
CAMP chief experience officer Amanda Raposo agreed that immersive is key to driving footfall. “We sit in a very dense retail category – toys – and so it’s hard to compete for loyalty, but by shifting our focus to experience, we give families a reason to keep coming back, and that loyalty actually unlocks the opportunity for us to build more CAMP-owned product and experiences.”
CAMP is known as “the store with the magic door,” Amanda explained. “When you enter our toy store, there is actually a secret door that you can push open and then it transports you somewhere special, via ticketed, rotating, narrative-driven experiences based around some of the most iconic IPs in the kids’ space, such as Disney’s Little Mermaid and Encanto, Trolls, Paw Patrol and Bluey. We see about a 55% attach rate on tickets, and when half of those tickets are adults, that means almost every kid is going home with something to remember their best day ever. Our highest product categories are the ones tied to our shows, and of course, the way we’ve evolved to meet that demand is after your one hour ticketed experience, you enter a highly curated gift shop of souvenirs to essentially commemorate your experience. While you’re booking your ticket, you can purchase products, such as Bluey ears, even before coming to the show to enhance your in-store experience.”
CAMP’s shows are produced by RWS Global, a company founded 21 years ago as a live entertainment producer. For ceo Ryan Stena, applying the ethos of that particular industry to retail makes perfect sense. “RWS Global is about telling a story. Everything needs a beginning, a middle and an end. When we started going into stores and doing shows, we would say, this isn’t telling a full story. The merchandise isn’t aligning with the experience.”
Simple changes, such as getting the actors in in-store shows to use particular products as props, meant the consumer would be apt to spend more money, Ryan explained. “They buy that merchandise because we’re telling a story. If anyone is just designing a space without an idea of story, it’s not going to be successful.”
Veronica quizzed the panel on upcoming trends in the immersive space, and how they might affect their businesses.
For Primark’s Sarah Jackson, the future “means really looking at how we mix digital and physical digital together and really capturing all the new technologies to really fully immerse that consumer and really bring joy to them each and every day.”
RWS Global, meanwhile, will be leaning into the rise in sports licensing; it has just purchased Australian company Great Big Events (now RWS Global Sports) and will be providing entertainment and interactive experiences for fans in-stadium.
For anyone considering jumping into the immersive space, the panel had a few words of advice.
“Know your customer,” said Sarah. “It’s very powerful in terms of experiences and engagement. If you know your customer, you can deliver the right things.”
“My advice would be, don’t get so caught up in technology,” added Ryan. “I know technology is the way of the future, but never underestimate the power of the human connection.”
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