Curiosity Rooms Presented by Google Pixel 3

How Google promotes his newly released phone ‘Pixel 3’

Prominently in the city centre of London, next to the Piccadilly Circus, Google installed a temporary exhibition around their new phone Pixel 3, which I visited recently. Within this space, they promote the features of the phone that distinguish it from its competition or are the main selling points through an experience for the visitor with this technology.

Curiosity Rooms (Hinger, 2018)

The USP of the phone is its camera and various features linked to it altough it has to be questioned if the features actually are a great advantage over the competitor's offers. But, these features seem to target an important customer insight: In today’s world, people like to take selfies everywhere and value good photo quality. Also, these are the most entertaining aspect of the phone and therefore were in focus of the exhibitions in the Curiosity Rooms:

• High quality pictures and videos from front and back camera and ideal selfies due to dual front-facing cameras

• High quality shots in poor light conditions

• Google Lens picture recognition of products, sights and plants as well as related shopping recommendations (According to a member of staff, facial recognition is not planned due to protection of privacy)

The other advantages of the phone, that are mentioned on Pixel 3’s website are not targeted through experiences in the exhibition:

• High resolution zoom

• Recommendation of perfect picture from a series of pictures

• Unlimited storage

• Voice recognition

• Long battery lifetime

• Wireless charging (Google Store, no date)

The triangle of constraints, a design is tested against according to Brown (2009), consists of feasibility, viability and desirability. Feasibility aims at a realistic technical solution for an idea, viability targets the successful realisation of the concept within a business context and desirability describes the fit of the product’s offer to the customer’s aspirations.

My interpretation of the Curiosity Rooms is that Google intends to trigger a desire for their new phone. They try to sell it based on an exciting experience that involves people in a playful way to get to know the product and thereby create a desire to possess the product.

Different stations to experience the features (Hinger, 2018)

The installation is made up of different stations: Testing the google lens function by taking pictures of clothes in washing machines, posing in front of a camera for a short movie in a photo studio like environment, dressing up for a Christmas picture taken in the dark or even sliding down a chute to test the picture in motion. In all the stations, where pictures were taken, they were printed out as a take-away gift and all photos and videos could be sent via mail.

Furthermore, the whole interior represents a fashionable lifestyle, indicating that with a Pixel 3 phone a user could become part of this desired group.

Only a small part of the whole installation is actually a shop, in which the Pixel 3 phone can be purchased.

In addition, they encourage the visitors to spread the word with the hashtag #curiosityrooms, thereby reaching even more potential customers.

Apart from the installation, they offer a number of free talks addressing interesting, current topics with famous speakers.

With this installation Google gets a lot of attention for their new smartphone by drawing attention to the desirable features. What I am really curious about, is actually the success in terms of visitors and sold products. According to a member of staff in the venue, there is an extremely huge number of visitors, 16.000 people within the first two 2 weeks as well a huge amount of sales. If this proves true, the Curiosity Rooms are a good example of clever marketing through the use of insights and the provision of experiences to create desirability, get people involved and therefore a successful product launch.

Reference List:

Google Store (no date) Google Pixel 3. Available at: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_3 (Accessed: 05 December 2018).

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. HarperBusiness. Abstract provided by getAbstract, 2010. Available at: bsili.3csn.org/files/2013/06/change-by-design-brown-e.pdf (Accessed: 02 December 2018).