While studies suggest that 70% of consumers make their purchasing decisions while they’re in the store, this year, you won’t even have to leave your couch to window-shop at some of New York City’s most iconic holiday storefronts.
Google has created a virtual image database of 18 window displays that line Manhattan’s famous shopping streets, including displays from Saks 5th Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Tiffany and Co., and Barneys New York. Users can download an app called Window Wonderland to take a virtual tour of the displays with stunning lifelike detail.
“We all love the window tradition here,” said Aman Govil, who heads Art, Copy and Code at Google. “It’s such an iconic thing. We thought it might be fun to put a unique Google spin on it and bring it to the masses.”
To create the high-resolution images, Google used a technique called panography to stitch together multiple photographs as if they were one cohesive image. The 21.5-megapixel photographs were taken with a high-end SLR camera at 14 frames per second, the f-number varying from 8.3 in brightly lit conditions to 2.1 in dark conditions, much like the human eye. The pictures can also be paired with a virtual reality headset to make them appear even more lifelike.
Panographic images are nothing new to the photography world, but, as always, Google took things one step further. Normally, Govil explained, “people take lots and lots of photos with a little overlap and blend them together. We took hundreds of photos with a lot of overlap.”
The end result is that you can feel as though you’re standing in front of any one of the famous store windows — without having to deal with the crowds or the cold.
The holiday window-dressing tradition has been going on in Manhattan for more than 130 years, ever since Macy’s first display in 1883. This year, highlights include the Tiffany’s exhibition of tiny dazzling Christmas trees, inspired by the work of famed window dresser Gene Moore, who worked with the jewelers for 30 years and was a frequent collaborator with artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.
The prospect of reaching a broader audience through the Window Wonderland app appealed to the stores themselves, too, particularly because Tthe app includes click-through links to many of the store’s online shopping sites.
“To do something even more immersive was exciting for us,” said Tiffany’s VP of digital marketing, Diana Hong-Elsey.
Macy’s window displays attract up to 10,000 people an hour during peak shopping times, but with Google’s help, their carefully-crafted elves and reindeer figures will now reach more eyes than ever.
“We feel like we’re extending the reach of the holiday spirit,” said Serena Potter, Macy’s VP for digital media. Google is already working on plans to revive the campaign for the 2017 holiday season.
27Dec
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