NOW Pop-up Store in Milan: We Tried the Sweet Tasting Experience in Advance

Imagine being able to "taste" your favorite TV series or your beloved sporting event through a flavor that evokes it through the sense of taste. This is what NOW, Sky's streaming service, offers in Milan with a totally innovative, free, and fun pop-up initiative in the heart of the city, to launch a new season of content, previews, and live broadcasts on the platform.

With a dedicated Pop-up Store, NOW offers its audience a unique sensory journey in Piazza Gae Aulenti, where content comes to life through the sense of taste.

Everything You Need to Know About the NOW Tasting Experience

• From Friday, September 12 to Sunday, September 14, from 10 AM to 7 PM
• Piazza Gae Aulenti, Portanuova, Milan
• The event is free

From September 12 to 14, 2025, Piazza Gae Aulenti transforms into a gateway to a new way of approaching NOW's hits. Shortly after the fountain in the center of the square, there is already a gigantic candy dispenser over ten meters tall: in the upper part, which contains "the prizes," there are symbols of NOW's most representative content: a ball with the Champions League logo, a microphone to symbolize X Factor auditions, a Formula 1 driver's helmet, one of The Last of Us zombies. Visitors can enter the lower part of the dispenser, where the candy tasting experience takes place: each person is given a token and offered a candy to try, without revealing its flavor.

These are not ordinary candies, but unique creations by Pasticceria Rapisardi. These are the world's first "content-flavored" sweets, inspired by NOW's most iconic programs. After ninety seconds of tasting and blind taste, visitors are invited to try to associate the tasted flavor with one of NOW's contents. All participants can challenge themselves to guess the correct pairing between candy and content, and win branded NOW gadgets.

Those who guess correctly win a branded tin with the entire candy collection, while everyone else receives a tote bag with the illustration created for the initiative by designers Youssef Zridi and Serafina Preziosa.

A Sensory Journey with Neuromarketing

This experience was designed by Sky Creative Italia not only to entertain participants but also to try to apply a sensory neuromarketing approach. Taste, smell, and sight combine to create an immediate and lasting connection with the content and the NOW brand, so that the relationship with the audience goes beyond that of a viewer on the sofa, with direct, sensory contact.

NOW's marketing manager, Maria Josè Pieroni, explains to me that the experience stems from a year and a half of study focused on Generation Z, who love to have direct, live contact with the brands they interact with and to get involved, perhaps in contexts that also allow sharing through posts, photos, and videos with their social contacts. Conceived by Sky Creative Next Gen (a team of Gen Z working on communication for Gen Z), the activity aims to engage an audience that seeks hybrid experiences between physical and digital, with special and personalized formats. This is the inspiration behind NOW's Pop-up, where each candy is a key to entering the platform's universe, making the discovery of programs a multi-sensory adventure and stimulating the memories of viewers who have already seen and loved them.

Not Just Games: Meetings at the NOW Pop-up Store in Milan

Towards the end of the three days, starting at 6 PM, the event will be enlivened by the participation of iconic faces from Sky and NOW programs. Here is the free-admission schedule for the three planned meetings:

• September 12 - Sports Day - The Calciomercato L’originale team
• September 13 - Series Day - The protagonists of the 883 series, Elio Nuzzolo and Matteo Giuggioli
• September 14 - Show Day - Jake La Furia