Foot Locker | Step Into Gifting
DEC|2025 - Designing an Immersive AI & Virtual Experience for Foot Locker's Holiday Campaign
For Foot Locker's 2025 Step Into Gifting campaign, I worked as part of the creative technology team at S—iR Creative Technology Studio, helping design a multi-platform activation that blended AI content, virtual worlds, augmented reality, and live retail experiences across Milan and Paris.
The campaign centred around The Bench Drop, a large-scale holiday activation inspired by Foot Locker's iconic bench, a symbol of community, sneaker culture, and shared experiences. While visitors gathered at physical events in both cities, a parallel virtual experience allowed audiences worldwide to take part through an immersive digital environment.
My role focused on designing several of the campaign's creative experiences, spanning AI content creation, virtual environment design, interface design, and campaign creative.
Designing the Virtual Foot Locker World
One of my primary responsibilities was leading the creative design of the campaign's virtual branded environment.
Working alongside developers and technical artists, I designed the look, layout, and visual language of the virtual space, translating Foot Locker's established identity into an interactive digital world inspired by the Bench Drop campaign.
Rather than simply recreating the physical event, the environment extended the experience into a stylised micro-city where visitors could create avatars, explore branded spaces, interact with AI hosts, unlock rewards, and engage with the campaign remotely.
The project explored how virtual worlds can become meaningful extensions of physical retail activations, creating experiences that remain accessible long after an event has ended.
AI Teaser Campaign
I also led the creation of the campaign's AI-generated teaser videos used across Foot Locker's social channels ahead of the activation.
Using emerging generative AI workflows, I developed a series of short-form motion pieces that introduced the visual identity of the campaign while building anticipation before launch.
The challenge was to create content that felt energetic, premium, and authentic to Foot Locker's brand while embracing a distinctly futuristic visual language. These assets formed part of the wider social rollout across regional Foot Locker channels and influencer networks, helping establish excitement around both the physical activation and virtual experience.
UI & Experience Design
Beyond the campaign visuals, I contributed interface design across several user-facing experiences.
This included designing UI components for the campaign's augmented reality gift card experience, helping create intuitive interactions that guided visitors from QR code activation through to receiving their digital gift card directly within their mobile wallet.
I also designed supporting campaign graphics for the physical activation, including printed promotional materials, ensuring consistency between the digital experience and the live event environment.
Blending Physical and Digital Retail
The Step Into Gifting campaign demonstrated how emerging technologies can enhance retail experiences rather than replace them.
By combining AI-generated content, immersive virtual environments, augmented reality, and thoughtful user experience design, the project created multiple touchpoints that connected audiences before, during, and after the live event.
Working across creative direction, AI content production, virtual environment design, and digital experience design allowed me to contribute to a campaign that successfully united physical retail with digital storytelling while reaching audiences both on-site and online.
