Summer remains peak season for alfresco pop-ups and guerrilla marketing, but a rare cold-weather effort focused on keeping people warm. At least that's what Uniqlo tried to do Tuesday morning, when the Japanese chain camped out in Times Square, telling New Yorkers exactly how cold they were with thermograph scanners and offering relief in the form of 4,000 free pairs of its HeatTech thermal underwear.
It wasn't as space-age as the widely circulated renderings had everyone expecting, but the promotion's so-called "human vending machine" did deliver on its promise of clothing distributed via snazzy choreography. After guests had their bodies scanned—and their thermal silhouettes displayed on flat-screen televisions for all of Midtown to see—they were invited over to a large trailer, where the push of a button prompted dancers inside the machine to pull out a box of the new underwear and bust a move. Dancers kept it keep it brief, though: Lines for the gratis garb were over a hundred people deep at some points.
Once the supplies had been drained and the scheduled three-hour stay on Military Island ran out, Uniqlo packed up the machine and presumably headed back to its U.S. flagship store in SoHo. But the effort is far from over. The company plans to execute the same concept in Beijing, Paris, and Seoul over the next two weeks (after debuting in London just days before the New York effort). All in all, Uniqlo reportedly spent upwards of $1 million on the campaign.
