TRO – The Experience Agency – spent a successful two days at the Retail Design Expo on 9 & 10 March launching ‘TRO Retail’ a sub-division of the business reinforcing the agency’s strategy to drive experience into retail across the globe.

The agency showcased a number of innovative creative technologies – including virtual reality, emotion tracking technology and eye tracking technology – that were creatively set within TRO’s stand which was designed and produced to look like a sweet shop. As a good indication of visitors’ reaction to the stand, Geoffrey the ‘emotion tracking’ Gummy Bear captured 2343 minutes of smiles across the two days – and rewarded visitors with an automatically released gob stopper as a ‘thank you’ for bringing happiness to the stand.

Retail Experience Director Ben Taylor commented “Whilst we are well versed in creating exhibition stands for our clients, this is the first time that TRO has represented ourselves at a trade show and we are delighted with the results. As well as road testing a suite of creative technologies – all of which have been programmed by our in-house team – we have also picked up a number of very exciting new leads that we will be following up in the coming weeks.”

TRO’s Australian-based Head of Creative Technology Craig McKay spent a month in the UK with his expanding global creative technology team – helping to support the project and the launch of TRO Retail. He adds: “As a business we are committed to spotting trends and emerging technologies that can support the experiences we create in retail as well as in any live environment. Our ultimate objective is to get more people engaging with, and sharing the experiences we create – and it is exciting to see how creative technologies are helping us to achieve this.”

TRO, is a specialist experience agency, with over 400 people creating award-winning brand experiences from 15 offices in 11 countries across the world in Europe, Asia and Australia. The agency was awarded The Drum UK Event Awards Agency of the Year title in 2015.

Photography by Xavier Fiddes