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When Japanese office furniture manufacturer Okamura conceptualized an installation for the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo, it ditched the typical corporate playbook in favor of something more human. The brand's Kimochi Kiosk (kimochi meaning 'feelings' in Japanese) transforms the mundane act of convenience store shopping into an emotional exchange between friends or strangers. Visitors enter in pairs and browse shelves stocked not with actual snacks and drinks, but with 46 different packaged emotions, including playful options like Otsukare Rice (a pun on the phrase "good work") as well as more vulnerable sentiments about love or forgiveness.The concept operates on a simple premise: participants select products that represent a feeling they want to share with their co-visitor, then 'purchase' these emotions at a checkout counter that prints a receipt they can use to communicate the feeling they chose. It's retail therapy in its most literal form, stripping away the commercial transaction to focus purely on human connection. The installation ran in April 2025 in the expo's Future Life Village. While it might seem like a radical departure for a purveyor of office systems and retail fixtures, the concept aligns with Okamura's core mission of "realizing a society where people can thrive."TREND BITEThe emotional convenience store taps directly into the growing pushback against machine-driven perfection. While algorithms and AI optimize for engagement and efficiency, Kimochi Kiosk celebrates the beautiful awkwardness of human connection the vulnerability required to select a feeling and the uncertainty of not knowing how it will be received by someone else. The installation embodies what we've dubbed HUMANIFESTO: the (counter) trend of choosing authenticity over optimization, emotional messiness over algorithmic precision.
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Marketing and Advertising
Nederlandse Spoorwegen has welcomed an unusual new arrival to Rotterdam's main train station. The Poem Booth, an AI-powered poetry kiosk that resembles a sleek outdoor advertising unit, is now stationed in the bustling transit hub as part of Poetry International's festival programming. The installation leverages literature for an interactive moment of surprise in an otherwise utilitarian space, making poetry accessible to anyone who happens to be passing by.The booth captures a photo of the person or people standing before it. Based on that image, it generates a personalized poem using generative AI that's been trained on the work of Dutch poet Ellen Deckwitz. Users are shown their custom verses on the unit's mirror-like screen and can save their poems via QR codes for sharing with friends. The project signals how cultural institutions are rethinking audience engagement, moving beyond static consumption towards participatory experiences that meet people wherever they are.
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Marketing and Advertising
What are the most common challenges that businesses face with martech implementations? What can teams do differently to avoid unsuccessful implementations? Read the full article at MarketingProfs
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
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