Projects: Apple Goes Very Big With LED In New Dubai Store

November 25, 2015 by Dave Haynes

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I’ve written in the past about how Apple’s much-imitated minimalist store design has always been, at least to me, curiously light on digital signage. A typical store has screens, but those screens are accents.

Very different story at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates, which has a giant, fine pixel pitch LED wall that dominates the rear of the newly opened store. It is reputed to be the largest Apple store on the planet.

Nick Giorgetti, a transplanted American who runs business development for the regional signage and interactive firm 2.0 Concepts, took me on a mall walk and the Apple store was a primary destination.

I can’t find any press with store details, but it looks like the big charcoal LED wall at the rear is at least 20 feet high by 28 feet wide, and uses – again guessing – 2,5 mm LEDs. Could be 1.9 mm. Don’t know.

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What I do know is that it looks pretty amazing – all of that owing to the content. It would cost probably $1 million-plus for that wall, but the simple, high resolution creative would have cost that as well. There are slow motion reveals and languid product shots of the new watch, the new phone, the new iPad Pro, and so on. There are no product statements, just the silent reinforcement that shoppers need these devices in their lives.

The key point here is a brand could spend that kind of money on an LED video wall and not make the right investment on content, and it would be wasted money. We all see that happen. This could easily just be a big old billboard at the back, but in this case, it’s all done right.

As Apple tends to do, this thing raises the bar on how to do big-budget in-store video walls.

No idea on the display vendor, and it’s likely tight-lipped Apple won’t ever allow said vendor to make any hay about it.

The store also has screens along a side wall, but it’s that big screen at the back that really stamps the store experience.

If you live in the region or pass through, this is a gotta-see box that needs a tick.

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Twitter chatter, post-post:

Me: My first reaction was also that the fit and finish of this back wall could maybe have been a little more polished, but I was speaking at an event in Dubai today and reinforcing that these sorts of projects fail or languish when the focus is all on the tech and content is the after-thought.

This is ALL about content, and my crappy phonecam images don’t do this justice. The content is GORGEOUS. Like consumer tech porn. Only signage nerds will care about the fit and finish, which is by no means bad … just coulda been better if in the right hands.

So-so video:

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