It’s not easy to judge a paint color by its swatch, so in announcing its first-ever 2018 Color of the Year, Behr Paint constructed a Pop-Up Trend Home in New York City’s bustling Grand Central Terminal. The activation on Aug. 9 brought the Color of the Year shade “In The Moment” to life and also offered engagements with other hues featured in Behr’s 2018 Color Trends palette, a spectrum “forecasted to influence décor and design in the year ahead,” according to the brand.
Located in Vanderbilt Hall, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the Pop-Up Trend Home offered rooms for commuters, tourists and the media to explore, designed so that attendees could “feel the emotion of the palette.” In the case of “In The Moment,” it was “tranquility” in the “spruce blue” hue, something commuters might welcome in their home after a long day.
The structure, complete with roof lines, turf grass and a brick walkway, featured a front door and welcome sign, and then a long deck with four multisensory home spaces to walk into. The first was a moody living room with a dark palette, greenery and plush furniture; next to that, a hallway featured cascading butterflies. Then, a bright blue bathroom space with glowing orbs representing bath “bubbles” that consumers could play with. And on the end, a shiplap-walled bedroom space with jungle-style accents.
In two locations, consumers could snap photos of themselves within the environments, add a hashtag and post them to Instagram and other social channels, as well as automatically print out the picture to take home. On the whole, the space offered several Instagrammable moments through consumers’ interactions with the props—like those bubbles.
The Pop-Up Trend Home featured a long deck with four multisensory home spaces to walk into.
On top of snapping and exploring the multisensory spaces, Behr Paint color experts chatted with consumers about DIY projects and offered color advice. Consumers could also explore the Behr 2018 Color Trends Palette with what Behr calls a paint industry “first”—360-degree video content viewed through VR headsets (View the VR experience below). The first 5,000 attendees received custom Behr 2018 Color Trends VR experience cardboard headsets.
For Behr, the activation served as a strategic launch venue for its first Color of the Year reveal alongside the release of the Color Trends Palette, as well as a source of inspiration for DIY consumers.
“This was a milestone for us and we wanted to offer consumers and the media a memorable opportunity to experience our Color of the Year, so we thought a pop-up house, within one of the busiest transportation hubs in the U.S., would be unexpected, be a showstopper and give commuters and tourists a respite and opportunity to pause,” says Jodi Allen, chief marketing officer at Behr. Agency: Olson Engage, New York City. Build: Trigger(House, Brooklyn, NY.
Watch: Inside Behr Paint’s Color Trends 2018 Experience
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