Patrizio di Marco, Gucci’s President and CEO, said: “This multi-year Immersive Retail Experience initiative underlines our belief in the growing importance of creating highly impactful and sharable brand experiences across all of Gucci’s platforms and touch points by taking advantage of rapid advances in digital technology. The all round sensory experience that a customer will now feel when approaching and entering our Montenapoleone store will create an unprecedented level of engagement.”

Commenting on the creative content opportunities presented by the Immersive Retail Experience Frida Giannini said, “As Creative Director this provides a wonderful new digital canvas upon which we can present incredibly rich and powerful content to inspire our customers.”

The OOOii Real Time servers that have been developed to drive all of the displays have been designed to be massively scalable to allow for immersive experiences throughout the store.  The technologies that are being installed not only allow ultra-high resolution 4k and 5k imagery to be displayed across the numerous high-resolution Planar displays, but in a second phase will also give a customer the ability to interact with the content in intuitive ways.  Pause, rewind and search for specific content by making simple hand gestures in front of the displays.  Then, if a customer likes a certain product they will be able to receive an image on their mobile device allowing them to consult with friends and later send a notification to their usual sales assistant in order for an item to be reserved. The film Minority Report was the visualization of these natural interaction models. Gucci’s Retail Immersive Experience initiative will represent the first actualization of some of these concepts.

Kent Demaine, Founder and CEO of OOOii, said, “For years Hollywood has perfected the art of merging virtual content into the physical world where the two appear to coexist.  For Gucci, we have moved these techniques onto a scalable architecture so that this process can happen in real time.  The ultimate goal is to allow consumers to explore the world of Gucci in effortless and highly engaging ways, while simultaneously allowing the brand to learn from this participation thereby informing the creation and presentation of future content.”

“Gucci is leading the way in creating interactive retail environments which combine its aspirational fashion content with technology inspired by science fiction films,” said Jennifer Davis, Vice President, Planar Systems. “Our unique display solutions, combined with OOOii’s innovation and Gucci’s vision, has created a partnership that is inventing a new premium retail experience.”

In a second phase, planned for 2012, additional functionalities will be introduced which will enable customers to interact with the digital content they are viewing across multiple displays using motions that are natural and intuitive.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband or the world’s most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence.

RETHINKING A LEGEND

            When looking to revive one of its most valuable franchises, Paramount Pictures turned to one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.  JJ Abrams’ upcoming blockbuster is creating quite the buzz around Hollywood as the first images are starting to appear.   Looking into the future with fresh eyes, production designer Scott Chambliss asked the designers at OOOii to bring all technologies to the table.  As imagery is released, we will be able to share the much anticipated result.