Fortune telling at Selfridges
I’m a big fan of the beautiful and sometimes bizarre displays in the store window at Selfridges. One of their most recent explores the theme of ‘Words’ and one artist has turned this theme into this rather delightful fortune dispending machine.
Filled with 30,000 plastic balls, each bearing a different word as a prediction of your next year you can watch them twist and turn around a giant wooden roller coaster of a space.
You simply pull a lever and are rewarded with a ball. I got ‘repetitive’ which doesn’t bode well to be honest, oh well!
I really like this concept as it gives consumers something really interesting to look at, whilst asking for relatively little action to receive a reward. It’s a concept more brands should look to use, and I can imagine a similar concept working for a brand in both the real, and digital space.
Also, it reminds me of Mousetrap, which I loved as a child, which makes me like this installation even more.
Instagram and Tiffany & Co
Nice campaign from Tiffany & Co encouraging both bloggers and the general public to upload photos of love and customise using Instagram filters. See all the photos submitted here
I’m a big fan of Instagram, and like that it’s possible to build the filters into other apps, just like Tiffany have done here.
The simple ideas are always the best
Cute email my friend received from Pizza Express as her birthday is coming up. Really simple idea but like this a lot.
We’re going tonight. Hello free wine!
Think this customer is a tad annoyed
An irate Carphone Warehouse customer has decided to take action and setup a fake Twitter account. They’re now tweeting unhelpful and rude, if rather amusing messages to people who are trying to speak to the real customer service team at Carphone Warehouse.
I’d be interested to see what Carphone Warehouse do next. I’d imagine they’re already on the phone to Twitter trying to get the unofficial account shut down asap.
But that wont soothe an angry customer. The user could easily spring up another account in a few minutes.
Discovered via @ceciliadom
UPDATE: Looks like Carphone Warehouse have relented and assisted the customer as I received the below tweet. Key learning.. hate the customer service being received? Be a nightmare and get what you want. Hmmmm
Now this is how to do customer service
Very sweet response from Sainsbury’s. Probably took this guy all of 5 minutes to reply to this letter, and what a lovely response it is.
Facebook and Twitter are going mad for it, and there’s even a fan page dedicated to the lovely man at Sainsbury’s who wrote the letter
Posted by Alex (age 27 & 1/4)
All I wanted was to listen to Florence
I’m a big Facebook fan, and will actively defend their actions in many conversations. But the tie-in with Spotify that interrupted my commute this morning I’m not happy about. I have no problem with the social apps sharing proposition, infact I think it’s great. I don’t always want to share, and it demonstrates my sometimes terrible taste in music. But on the whole I love seeing what friends are listening to and discovering new music. I go through phases of allowing and then disabling the feature.
However my issue is the forced acceptance/integration of Facebook into Spotify.
This morning I caught the bus as normal and went to listen to some Florence & The Machine (new album, see I do have some decent music taste) but instead was faced with this screen.
I know Facebook/Spotify really really want people to allow social sharing. But forcing users to read and accept just isn’t cool. My 3G access is rubbish and I didn’t want to have to deal with this as I knew no chance of logging into Facebook en route to work. So I hit the cancel button, which I’d assume means ‘I don’t want to deal with this’. But no, it logged me out of Spotify! The only way to proceed was to hit ‘Okay, thanks’ and then proceed to Facebook to go through the motions of allowing/disallowing the app. Especially annoying as I’d unchecked the box for sending my music choices to the Open Graph (in order to speed up the process).This took a good 5 minutes of my journey. I don’t want to be forced into doing this, but had to, to gain access to music. It’s especially annoying as I pay for Spotify Premium. I’d be far more accepting if I wasn’t paying for access, but the fact I am, and I still have to deal with this frustrates me immensely.
I see their point, and overall the sharing functionality is great, but forcing users through this frankly rubbish user journey, especially via 3G paid for access is just annoying and kinda goes against the ‘user comes first’ principle so extolled by Zuckerberg, don’t you think? Seems far more ad targeting ability first, and user second.
Go crazy for Cravendale with The Muppets
This is a really cute idea from Cravendale- request Muppets stickers to decorate your Cravendale with.
Cravendale are promoting via their Facebook page and encouraging users to request stickers and then share the results, which plenty are doing judging by their photo tab.
Also a nice touch asking Cravendale fans to vote for which character gets released next.
Great idea, like this a lot. Could also span off into further digital activations, such as allowing users to import Muppets into their own photos and share an album of the results.
