Robin writes to me about an experience at Papyrus, the dramatically expensive card shop chain in New York (and probably elsewhere.) She bought some cards, got back to her office, a card was missing from the bag.
She was on deadline, called them and they hand delivered (by messenger) a replacement card.
Now, of course, if that was a stated policy, it would be abused and taken for granted.
What makes it over the top and remarkable was that it came, out of the blue, just when it was needed.
June 20, 2006
and antibiotic-free eggs.
Well, the thing is, all swordfish is line caught. The long lines they use catch a whole bunch of other things as well, leading to significant depletion. That’s a big part of the reason you should never buy it. (the other reason is that it’s got poisonous mercury in it). And all eggs are raised without antibiotics.
And no, it doesn’t matter if the swordfish is "Atlantic" or "Pacific". Yet another clever modifier. My current favorite is "Ahi" tuna, a cool word that describes a less desirable kind of tuna!
Sometimes, marketers add a label where no label is needed. And that label is an effective way to highlight something about the product (or hide something).
This blog, by the way, is organic.
From Brian: How to Sell RSS. I don’t think there’s an easy solution in terms of renaming RSS… instead, I think we’ll see it become invisible, built in to browsers and such. You’ll "subscribe" to something, but the technique and technology will be nameless and transparent. Or not.
When I was a kid, a bad bike cost $39 and a great bike, a really great bike, cost $99. Maybe an adult could figure out how to spend $300 on a Campy or something, but a 10:1 premium was considered pretty extreme.
Today, a bad bike costs $69. A really great bike costs $3,000 and a superduper bike costs $8,000 or so. Figure the premium for the best is up from 10:1 to 100:1.
Same thing is true for restaurants (McDonald’s is still cheap, but Alain Ducasse is not.) And for cars, management consulting, coaching, charitable donations and wine.
The gap is getting wider and wider. In a lot of categories online, the bottom has gone to … free. Shopping online, in fact, is largely about the edges, and the people who are premium are at the edge.
June 19, 2006
Luke over at Big Sky Brands just sent over a mini case of their new Jones Soda Carbonated Candy (with "tongue-tingling flavor boosters" of course).
The boomers have even taken candy away from the kids, now.
Thanks to John Dodds: We now have far more silly store names to chuckle over: Shop Horror – Funny Shop Names.
June 18, 2006
Here’s a giveaway I got by email from Continental.
While appreciated, it was a total surprise. So, I have no idea why they did it… clearly not to induce me to buy something.
Second problem: the wording, from the subject line on, seems designed to keep me from actually opening and then redeeming the code. My guess is that they don’t have to pay for the unredeemed ones, but it seems silly to do a promotion that you don’t want to actually work.
P.S. trademark symbols are a legal tool, not a marketing one. No one ever lost a trademark because they left the ® out of an email. Or, in this case, almost a dozen of them.
Andy Gadiel sends in this photo. Why is this pie wearing a tie?
Tip: never use the word "shear" in the name of a hairdresser or "crust" in the name of a pie company. Trust me on this one.
The blog shouldn’t be called: Joel on Software. It should be called Joel on Things that Matter. The first half is a beautifully written post about a meeting with BillG at Microsoft.
There’s a lot of mythology in our lives, especially at work. Most of the time, that mythology is a lot more important than whatever fact you’re in love with right this minute.
June 16, 2006
Thanks to everyone who came to my seminar yesterday (reviewed: The Marketing Message Blog: Seth Godin’s June 15th teleseminar.) I’m still exhausted, and apologize for the light posts this week.
The key lesson for me was how much smarter people are getting about the online world–and fast. It used to be pretty easy to offer people new online ideas, because the future wasn’t very well-distributed. It’s getting a lot more difficult to do that now, because it seems as though (almost) everyone knows (almost) everything. At least that’s what my audience demonstrated yesterday.
