The Warehouse Limited by AIM Proximity

For the second straight year, AIM Proximity sought to give guys a helping hand in impressing their girlfriend on Valentine's Day, while also increasing online engagement among males with New Zealand retail chain The Warehouse Limited's Web site, which has a largely female visitor base.

“We were trialing the use of augmented reality and the thought that we could make a plain newspaper advertisement suddenly come to life seemed really impressive, and we thought would be a real hit with the audience, and two weeks later it was a reality,” explains Darryn Melrose, CEO of AIM Proximity.

The agency took out an ad in a newspaper and e-mailed a targeted list of guys driving them to The Warehouse site, where their gender was validated by answering questions only a guy would know. From there they could input a personalized message that would appear to spring from the newspaper ad in 3-D when held up to a webcam.

“We made it our mission to enable guys to do something they understand, and make it easy for them to impress their partner on Valentine's Day,” Melrose says. “We'll do the work, and they get the credit. Everyone wins,” he says.

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