Nils waits for the new IKEA catalogue – 24h a day LIVE

This idea seems to be a big one – having experience with the make IKEA without communicating it. The swedish company launched 3 days ago a viral plattform showing Nils waiting for the IKEA catalogue – live, in color & with sound. Likely, there’s no better experience to see people NOT having any IKEA furniture at home.

For me it’s the first viral idea which is really interactive and authentic. You can call, mail and send letters to Nils – Entertainment for all voyeuers & Big Brother fanatics.

http://www.warte-bis-september.de/

The truth about smart

UK Agency Republic brings the car make smart with a promotional website online. It seems that smart got a handful of insights of non-smart-drivers about the misconceptions and customer prejudices of the small city runabout. So the user passes a journey through themes like comfort, safety, space and fuel consumption and smart’s features in a british humorous way.

 

The site demands interaction and decisions, shows other users’ behaviour and presents the answers of the putted questions in amusing experiments. Excellent implemented: sales support, possibility of direct contact and lead generation at the end of the experiment process – well done!

So, who would you call if your smart has a meeting with a wrecking ball? The ambulance or a mechanics? Decide by yourself!
http://www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk

Inconvenience Stores

We are currently undertaking a retail audit in Germany for our Shopper Marketing Retail Exchange, gauging the store experience people have in supermarkets. While doing so, we saw this:

What we see here is a cooler shelf with convenience products, such as sausages, paddies and the like. Do you see the title for the products?

“Convenience”

Remember, we are in Germany here. While the term is known in the retail industry, i.e. to store owners and purchasing departments, how many people do you think find it “convenient” to try to guess the meaning of an English word while looking at a bunch of sausages? And why on earth is it in English anyway? There are perfectly good names available in German.

You might say, who cares? When people see the products, they know what it is. Well yeah, when and if they see them. But think about it: people navigate stores by browsing or searching. When you search, you are on a wayfinding path where you check of “your” products from a list. Where would you start looking for “Convenience” food when you don’t even know the term? Also, convenience foods are often placed at tactically relevant places for cross-selling purposes. This means it’s already hard to find them when you are expressly looking for them.

For the most part, a lot of retail experiences are still like websites in the mid-90s: confusing navigation, little orientation, cluttered signage, price confusion, little customer service, and long checkout times. So, when we do experience audits, whether for digital channels or physical retail channels, what happens a lot is that I get a Gary Larson moment. While surveying the store, I was reminded of his “Inconvenience Store” Comic.

When it comes to retail experiences, it’s definitely time some stores took more of a human view point. Apart from being better for people, it also helps your sales.