The Value Engineers » Closeness

Orange taps into social media with GlastoTag

Lou Ellerton — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:59:48 +0000

Following its pogo-powered wellies, Orange has concluded its sponsorship of Glastonbury with an attempt to create the most tagged photograph ever taken.

The photo of the crowd at the Pyramid Stage was taken at half-time during the England/Slovenia World Cup match, and is a massive 1.3 gigapixels in size. Created by Poke London, GlastoTag is made up of 36 separate snaps stitched together to create a panorama.

So far, Orange has amassed almost 8,000 tags – but with almost 70,000 faces in the picture, there’s still a lot of scope to play. With the ability to link tags to Facebook, the network provider has shown once again that it understands the power of social media.

It’s a lovely example of a brand tapping into the lasting goodwill generated by an event – and if you were there for the game, why not drop by the site and tag yourself? We will be…

A moment’s interruption in the 21st week of 2010 from 5 quotations relating to customer experience

Jossie Clayton — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:59:40 +0000

“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I pour an extra strong lager, I am handsome, I say, as I put on my Levi jeans” (John Kay)
“We view the experience of a Krispy Kreme store (where customers watch their donuts being baked behind glass) as the defining element of the brand” – (Scott Livengood, CEO, Krispy Kreme)
“Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from goods” (Joseph Piune and James Gilmore, The Experience Economy)
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” (Bill Gates)
“A little experience often upsets a lot of theory” (S Parkes Cadman)

Borrowed with pride from all over the place.

The three minute rule

Anna Eggleton — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:30:34 +0000

I recently read an article about a company called Cue Ball who have discovered another effective way to get consumer insight. They ask customers what they are doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after they use their product or service.

One of their products provided investment analysts with financial earnings data. When they applied the three-minute rule — they discovered that immediately after getting their data, their customers were painstakingly importing it into Excel and reformatting it. This observation led them to prioritize developing a more seamless Excel plug-in feature with enhanced formatting capability over other product development initiatives. The result was an almost immediate and very significant uplift in sales.

The three-minute rule also helps highlight unique cross-selling opportunities such as finding out that disposable cameras are often bought straight after the purchase of new born nappies.

The three minute rule is useful to overcome product myopia, produce cross selling opportunities and design better (and more lucrative) selling experiences. Customers seek solutions, but you might only be providing part of one. The three-minute rule is a forcing mechanism to see the bigger picture and adjacent opportunities.