Macy's Color Me Cool
Built a physical-to-digital system connecting hand-painted collectibles to metaverse gameplay for ~90,000 participants.
Situation
Macy's came to us with a question: How could a digital experience meaningfully connect to physical ownership in a way that felt creative, trustworthy, and scalable?
We worked directly with Macy's to build Color Me Cool.. a community art project for Cool Cats characters featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The experience brought together physical collectibles, applied computer vision, blockchain ownership, and a large-scale metaverse game.
This was not a feature build. It was a system. Support ~90,000 participants. Enforce a strict cap of 3,000 physical figures. Translate hand-painted artwork into digital 3D assets. Permanently bind creations to on-chain ownership. Protect customer data. Coordinate across partners.
Macy's retained ownership of the customer-facing digital experience for data security and compliance. Everything else had to align cleanly around that constraint.
My Role
I led the initiative in partnership with Macy's from concept through launch. My job was to co-create the product vision, define the end-to-end system, and own the physical and technical risk outside their platform.
That meant scoping computer vision capabilities, procuring NFC hardware, managing physical production, owning logistics and fulfillment, and coordinating partners to ship one cohesive experience.
Key Actions
Built the physical-digital bridge
Delivered 3,000 limited-edition figurines, each with NFC identity. Built system logic enforcing eligibility, scarcity, and claim integrity. Created a blockchain-based claim process. Each physical figurine could be digitized exactly once and preserved permanently as a 3D asset.
Applied computer vision at scale
Computer vision interpreted real-world artwork from mobile captures and translated it into digital 3D representations. Eliminated manual review. Kept the experience seamless. The goal was reliability, not novelty. When the AI worked, it disappeared.
Owned physical production and fulfillment
Procured and specced NFC hardware. Managed physical production. Controlled inventory and fulfillment. Coordinated across partners to ensure physical scarcity was correctly enforced digitally and brand integrity held across every touchpoint.
Interactive 3D model of a digitized Color Me Cool figurine. Physical artwork translated into a permanent digital asset.
Results
~90,000 users participated. 3,000 physical figurines produced and digitized. Physical scarcity enforced digitally. Customer data fully protected. Brand integrity maintained.
The result was a durable physical-to-digital ownership system, not a one-off activation.
Key Learnings
The strongest products emerge through partnership
This project was deeply collaborative. Working directly with Macy's from concept through launch let us build something that respected their constraints while pushing what was possible.
Applied AI works best when it's invisible
The computer vision pipeline wasn't a headline. It was an enabler. When it worked, users never thought about it. That's the goal: reliability that disappears.
The hardest problems live between teams
Scarcity and trust must be enforced systemically. The technical challenges were real, but coordinating partners, aligning incentives, and ensuring every touchpoint maintained integrity.. that's where the complexity lived.