How the World Cup Can Turn Stores into Memorable Experiences for Shoppers Comments Off on How the World Cup Can Turn Stores into Memorable Experiences for Shoppers 355

Alice Wonders3 de June de 2026 15:4119 de October de 2026

Troféu da Copa do Mundo em estádio de futebol representando oportunidades de experiência, engajamento e marketing durante a Copa do Mundo no varejo.

The World Cup is one of the biggest opportunities for retail to create emotional experiences and strengthen the connection between brands and consumers. In periods like this, retail stops competing only for attention and starts competing for emotion. More than a sporting event, the World Cup stirs up fond memories, gatherings, collective rituals, and a strong sense of cultural belonging. It’s a moment when consumers seek out experiences that make sense emotionally and that can be shared.

This behavior directly affects the relationship between brands and physical spaces. During the World Cup, consumption stops being merely functional and becomes emotional, social, and experiential. Consumers don’t just want to buy event-related products: they want to be part of something, capture moments, and create memories.

In this scenario, experiential marketing in retail becomes even more relevant. Major cultural events like the World Cup serve as opportunities for brands to build genuine connections with their audience. The goal isn’t just to theme stores, but to turn moments of intense emotional engagement into memorable experiences.

More than a trend, experiential retail represents a shift in how consumers perceive value. And occasions like the World Cup show how emotional experiences can strengthen the relationship between brands and their audience.

The World Cup in retail: the role of store design in creating immersive experiences

Today’s consumer behavior has been transforming the role of physical stores. In a world where much of our shopping can be done online, the physical space needs to offer something beyond convenience: it needs to deliver experience, emotion, and connection.

It’s precisely in this context that retail store design takes on a strategic role, going beyond aesthetics to help build narratives and sensations that strengthen brand perception.

During events that spark intense emotional engagement, like the World Cup, this potential grows even stronger. Consumers aren’t just looking for products tied to the occasion, but for experiences they can live, share, and remember.

That’s why experiential retail turns stores into spaces for socializing, interaction, and entertainment, creating more engaging journeys through themed window displays, lounges, interactive areas, and Instagrammable settings.

Technology and interactivity can amplify these experiences, turning commercial spaces into participatory, memorable environments. Gamified experiences, immersive rooms, and digital activations show how immersive stores can increase dwell time and strengthen emotional connection.

This relationship between physical space and emotion is also explained by neuroscience. The brain interprets environments before it even rationalizes purchase decisions, which means lighting, sound, traffic flow, and visual stimuli directly influence consumer perception.

That’s why retail store design should be approached strategically and with consumer behavior in mind, creating experiences that are consistent with the brand’s positioning. More than adding themed elements to the space, the real differentiator lies in translating emotions into authentic experiences.

The concept of “emotioneering” reinforces exactly this combination of emotion, storytelling, and technology to create genuine connections. In this scenario, experiential marketing in retail grows stronger because it recognizes that consumers form much deeper bonds with sensations and memories than with products alone.

How to create relevant activations without overdoing the theme

Here, we use the World Cup as an example of how major events and special occasions can work in retail’s favor, tapping into worldwide engagement to create experiences that spark emotion and keep audiences spending more time in physical spaces. Some ways to do this include:

Retail that triggers emotions creates longer-lasting memories

The World Cup creates a unique environment for retail to work with emotion, belonging, and memory. That’s why brands that invest in experiences during this period are able to build deeper, more memorable connections with their consumers.

Consumption is far more emotional than rational. We know that most purchase decisions happen unconsciously, influenced by emotional and sensory stimuli. In this context, in-store sensory marketing becomes a strategic tool for creating memorable experiences.

In brick-and-mortar retail, sounds, scents, lighting, temperature, and textures help build atmospheres that can influence mood, dwell time, and emotional connection. At culturally relevant moments like the World Cup, these stimuli carry even greater symbolic weight.

The material produced and shared by the Alice Wonders team at the online event held on May 22, themed ‘World Cup 2026: Let’s create activations that make some noise together [2nd edition]’, reinforces that immersive experiences activate areas of the brain related to memory retention and emotional processing. This explains why multisensory experiences stay in consumers’ minds longer.

In experiential marketing for retail, the goal isn’t to overload on stimuli, but to create emotional coherence between the environment, the narrative, and audience behavior. The right soundtrack can foster a sense of belonging, while scents and lighting help shape perception and dwell time.

On top of that, consumers tend to share experiences that spark surprise and emotion. This turns the physical experience into organic social media content, extending the brand’s emotional reach.

Multisensory experiences and the new consumer behavior

Today’s consumers are looking for more participatory experiences. Watching isn’t enough: they want to interact, personalize, capture, and share. That’s why the concept of immersive stores is growing within experiential marketing strategies in retail.

Technology plays a key role in this movement. Gamification, augmented reality, digital activations, and interactive installations help turn physical spaces into more dynamic and memorable experiences.

Also in the material created by Alice Wonders, we saw that gamified activations and collaborative experiences show how experiential retail uses technology not just as entertainment, but as a tool for human connection.

This movement goes hand in hand with broader cultural shifts. Today’s consumers value shared experiences, authenticity, and belonging. In this scenario, in-store sensory marketing helps create smoother, more emotionally relevant journeys.

The more senses are activated in a coherent way, the greater the emotional impact of the experience tends to be. And it’s precisely this ability to turn emotions into memories that strengthens the strategic value of experiential marketing in retail.

A relevant experience isn’t about visual excess

During the World Cup, it’s common to see campaigns packed with visual references to soccer. But at a time when consumers are paying closer attention to brand authenticity, simply “getting into the spirit” is no longer enough.

What sets experiential marketing in retail apart isn’t visual overload, but the ability to create experiences that are consistent with the brand’s positioning and with how its audience behaves. Major events work as cultural context, not just as themed decoration.

In experiential retail, relevance is built through meaning. Consumers can tell when an experience was strategically designed and when it exists only to ride a passing trend.

Retail store design plays a key role in this process. Instead of creating visually overloaded environments, the physical space should work as an extension of the brand’s narrative. Lighting, ambiance, technology, and sensory stimuli all need to contribute to a cohesive experience.

Today’s most relevant immersive stores are the ones that balance narrative, interaction, and emotion naturally. Rather than just talking about the event, they create experiences that make consumers feel part of something bigger.

Consumers can tell when an experience is genuine

Authenticity has become one of the main drivers of connection between consumers and brands. This means experiential marketing in retail needs to go beyond superficial entertainment. Consumers want consistency between messaging, environment, and brand positioning.

The World Cup is a strategic opportunity to observe how shared experiences spark a sense of belonging, nostalgia, and social connection. The role of brands is to turn these behaviors into experiences aligned with their essence.

Retail store design helps build this consistency because it directly shapes how consumers feel. More fluid, interactive, and welcoming environments encourage longer visits and spontaneous engagement.

On top of that, consumers expect physical and digital to work together. In experiential retail, this means creating experiences that continue beyond the store visit. Shareable activations, gamification, and digital interactions help extend the emotional bond with the brand.

Neuroscience also helps explain why authentic experiences make a bigger impact. The brain responds more intensely to situations that trigger genuine emotional identification.

The impact of memorable experiences on consumer perception and loyalty

In a competitive market, products and prices are no longer the only differentiators. Today, brands are competing mainly for a place in consumers’ emotional memory. This is exactly where experiential marketing in retail becomes essential for building value and loyalty.

In experiential retail, well-crafted experiences strengthen brand perception, increase unaided recall, and create deeper emotional bonds. Retail store design directly shapes this journey. Strategically planned environments can spark comfort, curiosity, interaction, and belonging—emotions that directly affect how consumers perceive a brand’s value.

According to Alice Wonders’ material, emotional connections boost sales and strengthen consumer loyalty. This shows that memorable experiences aren’t just branding tools, but also strategies directly tied to business performance.

In recent years, physical stores have had to redefine their role in the shopping journey. In a landscape where convenience and price are easy to find online, brick-and-mortar retail has started investing in experience, relationships, and emotional connection.

The immersive store trend is growing because consumers are increasingly interested in meaningful in-person experiences. The concept of “Third Places” and “Fourth Places,” cited by Alice Wonders, reinforces this transformation of retail into a space for community and social interaction.

In this landscape, experiential marketing in retail is cementing its place as one of the leading strategies for competitive differentiation. Today’s consumers aren’t just looking for products: they’re looking for stories, connection, and memorable experiences.

More than selling products, the future of retail will be increasingly tied to brands’ ability to create meaning, belonging, and emotional memory.

The World Cup shows how major events can turn physical stores into spaces for experience, relationships, and brand value creation.

Previous ArticleFan Zone in Retail: How to Turn Stores into Spaces for Engagement and CommunityNext ArticleHow the FIFA World Cup Can Transform Stores into Memorable Consumer Experiences

The Briefing That Kills a Great Experience 0 89

Alice Wonders7 de October de 2026 15:007 de October de 2026

Briefing estratégico para desenvolvimento de experiências de marca

“We need a campaign.” “Let’s do an event.” “We need an activation.” “How about building an app?” Almost all of these requests share the same first step: the brief.

In day-to-day marketing, phrases like these tend to show up as the starting point for new projects. The problem is that, more often than not, they don’t present the challenge. They already present the answer.

And when the solution comes before the problem, creativity starts out with less room to explore.

That doesn’t mean a campaign, an event or an activation is a bad choice. The real question is whether it is, in fact, the best answer to what the company needs to transform. After all, it’s entirely possible to execute a solution perfectly and still solve the wrong problem.

Before the “what,” comes the “why”

An effective brief shouldn’t start with the deliverable. It should start with the context.

What’s happening?;
Why does it matter to the business?;
Who is affected?;
What is that person going through?;
Is there a behavior or perception that needs to change?;
What has already been tried?;
And what don’t we know yet about this challenge?

These questions help turn a request into an opportunity for investigation.

“We need to create an activation to increase store traffic,” for example, already defines a big part of the path. But realizing that a significant number of people move through the space without engaging with a particular category opens up a far more interesting discussion: how can we make this journey more relevant?

An activation may still be the answer. But now it’s one possibility among many — not a decision made before the problem was understood.

A good brief opens up possibilities

There’s an important difference between giving direction and dictating the solution. A good brief needs to be clear about the challenge, the audience, the objectives, the context and the constraints. At the same time, it should leave room for the team to question assumptions and explore different paths.

It’s precisely this combination that can make the creative process more powerful.

When the brief says “do X to achieve Y,” the discussion tends to focus on how to do X as well as possible. When it says “we need to achieve Y because this is the scenario we’re facing,” the question becomes “what’s the best way to get there?”

It may seem like a small difference, but it can completely change the outcome.

The solution might lie in a physical experience, in content, technology, service, communication, environment, journey or a combination of different possibilities. The format stops being the starting point and becomes a consequence of the strategy.

So where does experience come in?

With whoever is on the other side.

A good experience doesn’t come only from what the brand wants to communicate or offer. It needs to take into account the context of the people who will live it. What do they expect? What could create friction? What’s relevant at that moment? What role does the brand play in that journey?

When these questions make it into the brief, the project stops being just about a deliverable and becomes about a transformation.

This perspective also helps avoid one of the most common mistakes in experience projects: creating something interesting for the company but not very relevant to people.

An idea can be beautiful, innovative and technically flawless. But if it doesn’t respond to a real need or doesn’t make sense in that context, it’s unlikely to be a good experience.

The brief doesn’t need to come with a ready-made idea

Perhaps this is the main shift in perspective: the brief isn’t there to say exactly what should be created. It’s there to create the conditions for the best idea to emerge.

That means spending more time understanding the problem before rushing to the solution. It means questioning requests, investigating behaviors, acknowledging constraints and leaving room for possibilities that weren’t on the radar yet.

In the end, the more clarity there is about the problem, the more freedom there is to think about the solution.

This is the mindset Alice Wonders brings to turning business challenges into experiences. Combining strategy, creativity and a people-centered approach, we help brands break away from ready-made solutions and find more relevant paths for what truly needs to be transformed.

Because a good experience may start with an idea. But a relevant experience starts with a good question.

Want to uncover new possibilities for one of your brand’s challenges? Talk to Alice Wonders.

In the Age of AI, What Still Needs to Be Human? 0 92

Alice Wonders6 de October de 2026 15:006 de October de 2026

Experiência imersiva que representa a conexão entre inteligência artificial e fator humano.

You know when you chat with an AI chatbot, get exactly the information you needed, and still feel like something was missing? Or when an AI-generated image is technically perfect but doesn’t stir any emotion at all?

These examples point to one of the biggest challenges of the AI era: the more technology we have at our disposal, the more valuable the traits that are still essentially human become.

Artificial intelligence already writes, creates images, analyzes data, personalizes content and automates processes. But with so many possibilities, a question arises: if technology can do more and more for us, what still needs to be done by people?

With that in mind, today we’ll look at what still needs to be human, even in the AI era, and how to get there without competing with technology, but by using it as a business ally. Enjoy the read!

AI has changed the game

To start, we need to understand that artificial intelligence has brought speed, scale and efficiency to companies in virtually every industry. Today, brands can analyze behavior, personalize journeys, generate content and automate interactions in a matter of seconds.

The problem is that when the same tools are available to everyone, technology alone stops being a differentiator. If any brand can use AI to personalize a message, generate an image or automate customer service, what will make one of them memorable?

That’s where the human factor comes in. AI can identify patterns, but interpreting context is another story. It can recognize emotions, but not experience them. It can generate possibilities, but it can’t decide on its own which of them actually makes sense for a brand. It can personalize an interaction, but it doesn’t necessarily create a connection.

In the end, memorable experiences are built on something that goes beyond technology: feeling, meaning and identification.

What still needs to be human?

Now that we understand how AI operates and how it can support a business, the question remains: what still needs to be human? So we’ve put together a few areas below where AI can’t perform as well as a human. Take a look:

Feeling: an AI can identify that a certain experience has the potential to move people. But it’s the person who feels surprise, nostalgia, belonging or delight. And it’s these emotions that turn an interaction into a memory;
Interpreting: data shows what people do. But understanding why they do it takes context, background and sensitivity;
Creating meaning: artificial intelligence can generate thousands of ideas. But an experience doesn’t become relevant just because it’s new. It needs purpose, it needs to align with the brand and it needs to make sense for whoever is living that moment.
Building connections: an unexpected detail, service that shows genuine care or an experience that feels designed especially for someone can create bonds that go far beyond the transaction. And the more automated our relationships become, the more value there may be in precisely these genuinely human moments.

What if AI made experiences more human?

Is there an ideal world where technology and human experiences support each other in perfect harmony? Well, in brick-and-mortar retail, this discussion becomes even more relevant. Instead of using artificial intelligence just to automate processes, brands can use it to enhance experiences.

Imagine spaces that adapt content to each visitor, experiences that personalize journeys in real time or environments that respond to people’s behavior.

Technology is there, but it doesn’t have to be the star. The star is the person living the experience. That’s why the question shouldn’t just be “where can we add AI?” but rather: “How can AI make this experience more relevant for the people who are here?”

Like other technologies, artificial intelligence is likely to become increasingly accessible. The differentiator, then, won’t be who uses AI, but who knows how to use it with purpose. That means starting with the consumer, understanding their behavior, defining what the brand wants to spark and only then choosing the technology that can make that experience possible.

Because AI can expand possibilities. But it’s the human perspective that turns possibilities into meaning.

AW: technology to create more human experiences

At Alice Wonders, we believe technology only makes sense when there’s a purpose behind it.

That’s why we combine technology, creativity and strategy to transform physical spaces into experiences that bring brands and people closer together.

Want to discover how to use technology to create more human and memorable experiences for your brand?

Click here to learn more about Alice Wonders’ work.