talking to myself

I think blogging is as much about bookmarking things for yourself as it is anything else so here's some stuff I want to bookmark:

- project (RED) one year on.
- What nike learnt from apple.
- The end of the website and start of content.
- 8 ways to bring consumers closer to marketing process.
- 7 lessons from the Dove campaign.
- Collective customer collaboration ring.

grow your own part 3

Growth has really kicked off in the last 7 days...

Pictured next to the cat grass is a strawberry plant from Niels and an unkown plant Salma got from Richard James. Everyone's getting a bit of grow your own at the minute by the look of it.

inspiration overload

In the past 72 hours I've had some very insightful and inspiring chats with Russell Davies, been shown some work and reasoning by Pearlfisher, sang Tom Jones at Lucky Voice, met the mighty Richard Seymour from Seymour Powell, had a guided tour of the Alan Flectcher exhibition by its curator and wandered around the museum of brands and packaging.
Phew.

i ilke this

by Gwen.

as good as their word

The zip on my eastpak broke a while ago after a few years use. I rembered eastpak had a policy of a life time guarantee on all their products though so sent it off to them after downloading a form from their website. I had no reciept or recollection of where I bought it but still they accepted it. Sure enough they are as good as their word and sent it back fixed yesterday.

What I really liked though is that they sent my old bag back with a new zip. I was assuming they'd just send a brand new bag for some reason. Both logic and sustainability would point to fixing the original problem though, if only 5% of the thing is broke then fix that 5% rather than bin 95% and start again.

grow your own part 2

Germination began on Tuesday or Wednesday, I wanted to get a picture in the daylight so we're quite far into germination now as the picture shows. Next step, well growth I presume.

bad soup

I bought a Covent Garden Butternut Squash, Apricot and Ginger Soup last week that was really no good. It tasted like tea.

I wrote them an email to let them know and got this back:

--------------------------
Good Morning

Thank you for your email regarding our Butternut Squash, Apricot and Ginger Soup. I'm sorry to hear that this was not up to our previous standards.

To enable us to check the batch that you had, we would need the use by date and batch code from the top lip of the carton. We can then check the samples we have from this batch. Unfortunately without this information, we would not be able to deal with your complaint.

Kind Regards
--------------------------

I understand they need the batch code, I threw the carton away before I could get it along with my chances of a possible week's supply of free soup. What really got me though was that the email came from a parent company... xxxx@danielschilledfoods.co.uk.

I always thought Covent Garden Soup was a nice brand. The people at the parent company could atleast pretend to be from Covent Garden Soup. It dilutes the brand so badly to do like above.

open to ideas

I just read this thing in trendwatching.com about Nike's trainer trial idea (above). It reminded me of an idea I had for howies a while ago that I've just typed up sent over to them.

I suppose there's two thing here really. One is the idea (below) and two is the fact that I see howies as being open to ideas enough for me to type it up in the first place. I think this is because I saw in one of their catalouges that they'd put a product idea into full production and sale after a consumer suggested it to them. Being open to ideas can only be a good thing for a brand I think. We get a lot of ideas sent to us at innocent like this and this.

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To: David at howies

I had an idea for howies a while ago that's just come back to me so I thought I'd share it with you before I forget it again.

I wanted to buy a pair of your jeans last year and narrowed my choice down to Skomer/ Wool Denim Skomer/ Plantation.
This is as far as I got though as without trying the 3 on next to each other I'd find it very hard to choose the right pair to invest in.

My thought then was that if howies took 1 pair of each jean in each size and made it available for loan as a 'try before you buy' with credit card details as a deposit, pre addressed envelopes and all that.

Then customers could get to try all 3 together without having to roam the city in the hope of finding at stockist that's got all 3 in my size. Then they could make thier decision, send the trial pairs back and order a brand new pair of the one they want.

You could make this a really nice experience by attaching a library card type bit to each jean so you can see where it's been before and who's tried it and what they thought etc. People could add notes in the pockets. It would be like parce the parcel.

Minimal outlay maximum benefit.

Ted
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freeview

Freeview boxes are great. I got one for £25 in Comet on the weekend. You get loads of free new channels and can even watch Bullseye and Krypton Factor re-runs. I've just realised that Gordon Burns is a dead ringer for Angus Deayton. Uncanny. I even thought it must be a young Deayton, I had to check the credits at the end.

grow your own part 1

Habitat are selling these grow your own kits for a fiver now. They come with terracotta pot, packet of seeds (cat grass), and soil biscuits. I especially like the soil biscuits. You just put them in the pot and add a glass of water and they turn to real life mud by magic.

Next step germination.