Retail mar­ket­ing strate­gies have been evolv­ing in the direc­tion of omni-chan­nel mar­ket­ing over the last few years, as seam­less brand reach and inter­ac­tion across TV, cat­a­log, Inter­net (mobile and desk­top) and brick-and-mor­tar stores is the Mec­ca top brands are striv­ing for.

In 2014, ecom­merce and in-store retail came togeth­er in inno­v­a­tive ways. Tech­nol­o­gy enhanced in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ences with aug­ment­ed real­i­ty. Real-life cus­tomers were embraced as brands’ hot new mod­els. And brands hand­ed over con­trol, trust­ing influ­encers to present prod­ucts in fresh and cre­ative new ways.

Here’s a look back at the retail mar­ket­ing strate­gies big brands adopt­ed in 2014 to enhance the shop­ping expe­ri­ence, seam­less­ly tran­si­tion­ing online and offline.

1. IKEA Catalog Virtually Beams Furniture Into Consumers Homes

Sure, that ottoman looks great in the per­fect­ly staged pages of a cat­a­log, but how would it look in your liv­ing room? IKEA’s aug­ment­ed real­i­ty cat­a­log answered that ques­tion, with an app that could beam the likes of the fur­ni­ture com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts into an image of a con­sumer’s own space.

When IKEA’s 2014 fur­ni­ture and home goods cat­a­log was paired with a down­load­able mobile app, view­ers got a real­is­tic visu­al­iza­tion of how those prod­ucts could fit into their actu­al life. Because the app got 8.5 mil­lion down­loads fol­low­ing its Decem­ber 2013 launch, IKEA prod­ucts are now a tap away from pur­chase in the pock­ets of mil­lions more con­sumers.

Bryan Eisen­berg, author and founder of Ide­alSpot, says there’s so many things that were done well in the IKEA cam­paign. “IKEA has bril­liant­ly exe­cut­ed this omni-chan­nel cam­paign,” he said.

While allow­ing con­sumers to visu­al­ize the prod­ucts in their home is good, Eisen­berg says what makes the cam­paign excel­lent is “how great of a job they do at mak­ing cus­tomers antic­i­pate the arrival of the phys­i­cal IKEA cat­a­log.”

“Go ahead and think back to the last time you were antic­i­pat­ing pro­mo­tion­al mail,” Eisen­berg said. “IKEA is let­ting cus­tomers know about all the fun you can have with the cat­a­log, even if you don’t go to the store. The cher­ry on top of this deli­cious­ly exe­cut­ed ad is the mes­sage that the cat­a­log, just like going to an IKEA store, isn’t just about pick­ing up prod­ucts, it is all part of the fun, inter­ac­tive brand expe­ri­ence IKEA has cre­at­ed.”

Chris Bog­gs, founder of WebTrafficAdvisors.com, says the IKEA cam­paign was among his favorites from this list, and that “its use­ful­ness and appeal is obvi­ous,” say­ing that “this type of app also acts in a broad­er capac­i­ty to help mar­ket­ing as a whole evolve to pro­vid­ing bet­ter and bet­ter vir­tu­al tech­nol­o­gy for con­sumers to use dur­ing prod­uct con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Ana­lyz­ing the cam­paign from a con­sumer per­spec­tive, Bog­gs said that if he were in the mar­ket for new fur­ni­ture, “I would def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er this app for use with my iPad. Per­son­al­ly, the larg­er the screen, the bet­ter for me, although the images I hope could be trans­ferred from a small­er hand­held device to a larg­er one, or for me to view on a lap­top, or to share with oth­ers via text or email. My like­ly pref­er­ence would be to use Chrome­cast or Apple TV to be able to wire­less­ly view on a large screen.”

And as a con­sumer, Bog­gs said the “fam­i­ly imagery in the pro­mo­tion­al video res­onat­ed with me, as I could see my kids and I act­ing in the sil­ly man­ner por­trayed. How­ev­er, I felt a few more ‘real’ images of how this app would ren­der the pro­posed fur­ni­ture piece into a more crowd­ed (real­is­tic) room with­out all the jump­ing around would have been use­ful. In a mar­ket­ing sense, I guess this was effec­tive, as it left me want­i­ng a lit­tle more.”

What might Bog­gs have done dif­fer­ent­ly with the cam­paign, giv­en the chance?

“The whole app theme and sub­ject should be cov­ered by IKEA with SEO and PPC. A search for ‘ikea aug­ment­ed real­i­ty’ results in a fail­ing grade from my per­spec­tive for IKEA, because their own domain isn’t rep­re­sent­ed until the fourth organ­ic result.”

“There is also no paid list­ing sup­port­ing the app,” he added. “Grant­ed, the iTunes and Google Play links direct­ly to the app are promi­nent, but the two media sites cur­rent­ly rank­ing prove that most of the down­loads came from buzz. IKEA could do some rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple SEO to get their page to No. 1, and the iTunes and Google Play down­loads above the media as well.”

Retail mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy take­aways:

• IKEA is using cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy to help shop­pers pic­ture what their life would be like with their prod­ucts. How can you remove the unknown, and help cus­tomers see exact­ly how much bet­ter things could be with your prod­ucts?
• What retail­er does­n’t want their prod­ucts in their cus­tomers’ pock­ets? Mak­ing an online brand pres­ence mobile friend­ly was a hot top­ic of mar­ket­ing in 2014. Whether it’s a mobile app, a mobile site, or a mobile-respon­sive design, retail­ers must take care to ensure their cus­tomers have opti­mal inter­ac­tions on their phone.

2. Target Turns To Top Vine Users to Showcase Products

Tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing was all about con­trol­ling the mes­sage; new media mar­ket­ing rewards brands that give up con­trol and let cus­tomers and fans car­ry the mes­sage. With the help of social video col­lec­tive Unpop­u­lar Now, big box retail­er Tar­get trust­ed that its prod­ucts would shine in inno­v­a­tive short-form video pro­duced by invit­ed Vine users.

In April, Tar­get sent 10 Vine artists a mys­tery box of props and asked them to film and post to Vine one video of them open­ing the box and a sec­ond video of them using the items inside the box. Videos and the cam­paign were hash­tagged #unPOPthe­box.

While Tar­get start­ed the cam­paign with 10 care­ful­ly select­ed Vine users, the brand was flex­i­ble and open to let­ting it evolve. Social media gave the cam­paign a life of its own, with increased reach as a result. #unPOPthe­box was the 2014 Mashies award win­ner for Best Use of Vine.

Vine artist yellde­sign cre­at­ed this Vine from his Tar­get gift box:

Retail mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy take­aways:

• Step one in this cam­paign was Tar­get tap­ping into online influ­encers in return for free prod­ucts; the Tar­get brand was shared with influ­encers’ net­works. If there’s an influ­encer that match­es your cus­tomer per­sona, could your great cus­tomer ser­vice get back to their net­works?
• While Tar­get gave its prod­ucts away, the brand was paid back with free user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent. User-gen­er­at­ed con­tent can be a gold­en asset online, pro­vid­ing social proof that a brand can’t man­u­fac­ture for itself.
• By focus­ing on the emerg­ing social net­work Vine, Tar­get could stand out in one of the less-sat­u­rat­ed social spaces. New social plat­forms and com­mu­ni­ties just begin­ning to gain trac­tion could be oppor­tu­ni­ties for ear­ly adopter brands.

3. Brands Vote: America’s Next Top Model Is You

Retail mar­ket­ing trend alert: more and more brands are using social media to promi­nent­ly fea­ture their own cus­tomers wear­ing and using their prod­ucts. Brands have long brought atten­tion to celebri­ties don­ning their goods. But with social media, every con­sumer is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for prod­uct place­ment.

“Peo­ple trust com­plete strangers more than they trust brands,” accord­ing to Jose de Cabo, co-founder of Olapic, a soft­ware appli­ca­tions that helps retail­ers search social media for pho­tos and post them on web­sites. “Peo­ple who click on real-peo­ple pho­tos are two times more like­ly to con­vert to a sale.”

In April, Marc Jacobs brought the cus­tomers-as-mod­els trend to the next lev­el with an open cast­ing call for the next face of the brand. All that peo­ple had to do was post a pic­ture of them­selves on Insta­gram or Twit­ter with the hash­tag #Cast­MeMark to enter.

Retail mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy take­aways:

• When user con­tent is re-shared by major brands, it encour­ages more con­tent and par­tic­i­pa­tion. The brand gets more con­tent and ever-broad­er expo­sure.
• By repost­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent on a brand site and pho­to gal­leries, the orig­i­nal posters feel a con­nec­tion with the brand, help­ing to build loy­al­ty. Cam­paigns like 2013’s #Coach­FromAbove cap­i­tal­ize on every­one’s desire for 15 min­utes of fame. That brand has gained that cus­tomer’s loy­al­ty and a life-long pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tion.

What oth­er new or note­wor­thy retail mar­ket­ing strate­gies did you notice in 2014?