Checkout Challenge: How Elation Digital Brought Grocery Gamification to Meijer’s Mobile Marketing Tour
When Meijer wanted a way to prove its value proposition on the road, the brand didn’t reach for a banner stand or a stack of coupons. It reached for a game. Elation Digital designed and built the Checkout Challenge, an Android tablet experience paired with a live attraction loop and leaderboard, for Meijer’s mobile marketing tour making stops at various locations still being finalized.
The result is a tent activation that turns a simple grocery run into a head-to-head savings competition, and the early feedback from the field has been strong: the client shared photos from the first event and said people are loving the game.
Meijer’s pitch to shoppers is straightforward: you save money by shopping there instead of the competition. But “we’re cheaper” is a hard message to make memorable at a tour stop. Elation’s job was to translate that value proposition into an interactive format guests would actually want to play, remember, and talk about, the kind of hands-on moment that works well as a trade show lead generation tool.
The core game runs on Android tablets set up under the tour tent. Players are dropped into a simulated grocery run and asked to select 20 to 25 products from that event’s rotating catalog, all while trying to land as close as possible to a set budget without going over. Once the cart is locked in, the game generates a digital receipt showing the total.
That receipt is only half the story. The game then places the Meijer receipt side by side with a competitor’s receipt for the same cart, followed by a “Total Savings” summary that makes the price difference impossible to miss. It’s a simple mechanic, budget management, but it does double duty: it’s fun to play and it delivers Meijer’s core brand message in a format guests generate themselves rather than just reading off a sign.
Individual tablet play is only one layer of the activation. Every score gets pulled into a PC-driven 55-inch LED attraction loop that sits at the center of the tent, functioning as both a smart engagement platform and a content hub for the tour.
The screen does three jobs at once:
That last detail matters. A leaderboard built on precise dollar amounts, rather than points, keeps the competitive tension tied directly to the brand’s savings message, and it gives every player a reason to glance at the interactive kiosk and see where they land against the rest of the tour stop.
Mobile marketing tours live or die on repeatable, low-friction engagement. A game built around a familiar activity, grocery shopping, lowers the barrier to entry because guests don’t need instructions on how to play; everyone knows how a shopping cart and a receipt work. Layering a leaderboard on top adds the social proof and light competition that keeps a tent busy for an entire event, not just the first hour.
It’s a similar principle behind other retail and FMCG activations Elation has built, where the goal is to get shoppers hands-on with a brand’s message rather than just walking past it. For more on that approach, see our breakdown of game ideas for retail and FMCG booths.
The Checkout Challenge is now live and touring, and initial feedback has been positive. After the first stop, Meijer’s team sent over photos from the event and reported that guests were genuinely enjoying the game, exactly the kind of organic reaction a tour activation is built to generate.
As the tour continues to additional locations, the attraction loop and leaderboard will keep collecting scores, giving Meijer a growing, visual record of engagement at every stop, and giving shoppers one more reason to stick around the tent a little longer.