Shopping in a foreign country can sometimes be a pretty tall task – but it’s especially challenging in Japan, where only 3% of natives speak another language.
Japan’s largest cosmetic store Ainz & Tulpe believed that language barriers were making the traditional makeup counter experience very difficult for consumers, so they came up with a nifty way to overcome this.
‘Look’, an interactive shop window, was created that used digital signage to provide multilingual support to shoppers. The window featured a giant touchscreen display containing moving images of women with ten different makeup looks popular in Japan. Of course, all products used were sold at Ainz & Tulpe.
Shoppers were asked to choose their favourite ‘look’ in order to receive printouts of how-to tips and coupons in their native language. When the shopper used their coupons in store, not only did they receive a discount but in less than three minutes, the products from their chosen ‘look’ were applied to their own face. 
And the clever part? Facial recognition was used to detect facial expressions to identify the nationality of the shopper interacting with the window.
We like the ambition of this concept and the way in which it sought to use facial recognition technology to provide a strong brand experience to people of all nationalities.