I Second That Emotion.

When I saw this last week, I wondered what the "emotion of the Ferrari world" might be. But, after this weekend's Grand Prix, I am informed that it is "unhappy, but not angry". Does that mean they'll be selling Ferrari hankies and chocolates? I'm guessing it'll be a red shop.

How Much?

Pricing is difficult. White Cube demonstrates the importance of identifying with your customer while relieving them of large sums of money.

Great Customer Service (Timbuk2 Style).

A small company's CEO adds a comment to a blogpost about the excellent customer service that the blogger had received in response to a complaint. You can and should read the full story here.

Real people treating customers as they would like to be treated and reaping a whole mess of word of mouth in the process. Give your staff the confidence to act like this and your customers will do your marketing for you. Break the rules that should be broken.


Addendum: In light of some linkage problems here is the complaint


and Timbuk2's response.




(Via Adriana's del.ici.ous)

Focussed Attention Is The Goal.

Having been underwhelmed by the in-store experience I described the other day, I actually had my attention grabbed by the window in which there was no "free live music".

It's equally dislocating to see a washing machine in a shoe-store window as it is to see a live musician, but it doesn't distract from what you want the customers to think about.

Retail Knows When Your Time Has Passed.

Welcome To The Underwhelming Economy.

Walking past the Nokia Store, Regent Street - that inspiration for so many blogposts - I peeked in to check that I had not been unfair with my previous comments. But no, it was empty again and yet, as this picture shows, not devoid of activity.


I've no idea who the Bananarama tribute act are, but I do know that this is not what is meant by the experience economy. They danced and sang perfunctorily, the staff were as disconnected as before and customers remained a rarity. What were Nokia thinking? Who knows? But no-one seems to have remembered that for the "experience" to be worth the name, the customer must find it engaging and/or relevant.

And it's just Nokia's bad luck that they chose to do it today. I would have written the same post even if they hadn't because two hundred yards down the street, at the Timberland store, I'd already encountered this.


Now, Ashley Hicklin is a far more talented performer, but he too was being ignored (and in a shop window no less) while London's masses thronged past. As Iain Tait says of the online world, "When you’re doing distributed stuff, never forget the importance of clear signposts." It's just as true offline. Otherwise what you get is some insiders recording the event - no doubt so they can show how cool and innovative it had all been - and very little customer interest.


As I wandered around, admiring some very nice merchandising (of which more another time), someone who looked suspiciously like a marketing guy announced to me with total sincerity that "We have free live music instore today." WTF? Maybe someone had read that "free" was the new black or had signed up for Reboot? Maybe there's been some recent seminar that identified instore performance as retail's killer app? I really don't know. Can anyone explain it to me?

Welcome to the underwhelming economy.

Should Advertising Lie?

Well, of course, there are regulations to prevent false claims, but the question came to mind when I saw an advertisement for the genealogy website genesreunited.co.uk that features film of a small group of elephants walking single-file through a dry river-bed. The voiceover informs the viewer that they are searching for the Elephants' Graveyard.

The trouble is that the Elephants' Graveyard is a mythical invention and furthermore I'm pretty sure that the footage (which frustratingly I cannot find online) has been taken from a recent documentary about desert elephants. Their hunt is not for ancestral grounds, but for new sources of water in the face of a severe drought.

Does that matter? I don't know, but in an age of ever-increasing transparency it makes much more sense to be completely sure that you're telling the truth because once you're caught in a lie (even an inadvertant one), everything else you say will be open to doubt.

The fact that genesreunited.co.uk is owned by the country's biggest commercial television network is just an added irony.