Every winter retailers around the globe battle for the attention of holiday shoppers. With the popularity and ease of on-line shopping, getting shoppers to step foot inside retail stores during the busy holiday season is a challenge faced by vendors across the board. For those brave shoppers who choose to bare the crowds and take to the streets, the challenge for retailers shifts to figuring out how to stand out amid the various signs for holiday sales and one-day-only deals.

Not immune to the retail holiday challenges, Barneys New York, the luxury specialty retailer known for setting a high style bar among high-end retailers, must also find ways to cut through the red-holiday tape and successfully reach customers. In the company’s quest to continually blur the line between art and fashion, Barneys has pioneered initiatives to bring appreciation of the arts to the public. This mission was evident when the retail company partnered with design company Q4 to transcend the Barneys flagship Madison Avenue store into a complete holiday experience inspired by Lady Gaga: the pop culture icon who continually demonstrates that art and fashion are one and the same. 

With the concept in mind, Q4 set out to determine how to transform Lady Gaga’s music, fashion and philanthropic work into a storewide holiday experience that caught the attention of customers, while delivering a powerful story. The traditional window mannequins, garlands on the bannisters, and visits with Santa, were clearly not options. The goal was to create an experience that differed from traditional holiday displays by depicting Santa’s iconic holiday workshop as perceived through the eyes of Lady Gaga. Among the many “elements of Gaga” the project aimed to incorporate, social media was integral. Given Lady Gaga’s strong Twitter presence that lets her stay in constant communication with her “Little Monsters”, Q4 was taxed with the challenge of determining how to incorporate Gaga’s social media presence into a retail display. 

The vision of bringing Lady Gaga’s social media persona to the windows of Barneys New York and thus the streets of New York City, was realized when Q4 discovered Prysm’s revolutionary Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) technology. Prysm’s seamless display platform enabled the Q4 team to create a larger than life 11.67-foot by 6.2-foot video-wall to engage and interact with people walking by the store’s window like never before. Showcased in a display titled “Gaga Constellation,” Prysm’s LPD video wall features large scale, streaming Twitter messages from Barneys’ customers and the general public.

Thanks to Prysm’s LPD video wall, Q4 was able to create a unique experience to engage with Gaga’s “audience” by beautifully showcasing live tweets from the public, as well as a 90-second film directed by Tim Richardson featuring Lady Gaga morphing into and out of various star formations. Because Prysm’s revolutionary LPD technology offers free-form design capabilities and requires no cooling infrastructure, the display fit seamlessly into the restricted space to truly captivate the attention of the passers-by. With the help of Prysm’s brilliant picture quality and vibrant video colors, Q4 successfully created a holiday experience that made Barneys New York not just stand out, but truly shine during the 2011 holiday season.  

Imagine other creative applications with Prysm’s Display Solutions »