people happily line up, hand over $7, and endlessly film and photograph the process on their smartphones. It’s executed with the skill and polish of a major FMCG brand, and the intuition of a merchant. For the uninitiated, this is how the procedure works. Take a ‘naked’ Magnum and choose a chocolate coating – white, milk, or dark. Select up to four toppings, including ‘specials’ such as crumbled meringue and ‘experimentals’ like rose petals. Wait for it to be drizzled with chocolate by a Magnum ‘bar-ista’ and finished off with a chocolate Magnum coin. Finally, shoot the result on the iPad provided, and share with your friends on social media. Yes folks, customers are willing participants in both the theatre and the promotion of the store. I’ve written before on four megatrends influencing retail, and the Magnum store checks off all of them: 1. Globalisation The Magnum Pleasure Store is popping up for limited engagements in major cities across the world, including Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Toronto, and New York. This is a worldwide phenomenon in a borderless age. 2. Polarisation Retail has polarised into extreme value offers at one end of the spectrum and luxury or specialty at the other. The Magnum Pleasure Store successfully turns an everyday (albeit already premium) item into a super premium must have. 3. Digitisation This is a store that has been digitally driven at every possible opportunity. Its arrival was breathlessly anticipated on social media (including YouTube clips of other cities opening their stores), and its fame is spread further on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 4. Personalisation Today, retail is all about ‘me-tail’. A big part of the appeal of the offer is that customers can create their very own Magnum concoctions. As much as it is on-trend, the Magnum Pleasure Store also adheres to a very old rule in retail: the principle of scarcity. The store is in one place for a strictly limited run and that heightens its appeal. It screams “get in before it’s gone”. It also allows the customer to watch the factory in action (and in fact direct the production line), and that is incredibly engaging. As Inside Retail noted, this is another example of a brand manufacturer going vertical. Arguably, the best retailers in the world these days are brands, such as Apple, Nespresso, and Nike. If you’re in Sydney, and interested in retail and shopper behaviour, the Magnum Pleasure Store is well worth a visit. Look, lick, and learn. The Magnum Pleasure store is open until August 25 at Westfield Sydney. * Jon Bird is chairman of specialist retail marketing agency IdeaWorks (www.ideaworks.com.au), and also of Octomedia, publisher of Inside Retail. Email: jon.bird@ideaworks.com.au; Blog: www.newretailblog.com; Twitter: @thetweetailer.