photo courtesy of Gladys Santiago

vitaminwater recently released a new ten-calorie drink called vitaminwater10. To introduce it, the company didn’t spend millions of dollars on television commercials. Instead, they took over an empty retail location and opened a pop-up store.

The store, called “vitaminwater10 des10ation NYC,” opened on April 2nd with a red carpet kickoff party hosted by Carmen Electra.

Then, for the following ten days, the pop-up offered SoHo shoppers a place to hang. The store featured couches and refrigerators stocked with free samples of the new flavors. Visitors also entertained themselves with free WiFi, Nintendo Wii, foosball, a photo booth, and a revolving cast of DJs. In the store’s window, a live model demonstrated simple ways people could burn ten calories, including taking a shower and blowing bubbles.

On April 13th, the store closed. What did vitaminwater get for its ten days?

Ten days is longer than most promotional events, so it provided time to get people into the space, experience the brand, and try the flavors.

Ten days is also, in some sense, short. The time frame gave customers a sense of urgency. If they didn’t visit the store immediately, they ran the risk of missing out on the experience.

The pop-up also allowed vitaminwater an economical way to test customer response to its products. Temporarily taking over a vacant retail location is certainly cheaper than launching a television campaign, or rolling out a product nationwide to find that it misses the mark with customers.

vitaminwater is a recent pop-up example, but the concept has been around for years.

We’ve all seen Halloween stores that pop up in empty locations with the sole goal of selling product. These near-makeshift stores don’t even care if you know their name. They just want to get rid of as many clown wigs and vampire fangs as possible. These stores are strictly sales-driven.

Then, there are examples like Nike who, a few years ago, opened a pop-up location with the goal of selling 250 pairs of Zoom LeBron IV NYC basketball shoes. Why 250? That’s how many dollars the shoes cost. This pop-up was both promotional and sales-driven.

vitaminwater, however, didn’t sell any product. They gave it away. They used the pop-up space as a way to build brand equity.

Regardless of how it’s used, a pop-up store makes the store itself a limited edition item. It becomes as rare and desirable as a limited edition product.

As more retail space becomes vacant and companies look for more interesting ways to reach customers, we expect to see an increasing number of pop-up stores popping up.