I get kind of fed up of hearing planners talk about the ‘amazing insights’ they’ve discovered only to see them present work that is …
1 Exactly the same as the category
3 Just an ad
I know me ranting about this is nothing new however whereas before I thought Tesco’s were the most creative company [interms of developing product/services around cultural/lifestyle insights] I have now decided it’s internet ‘gadget’ shop, Firebox.
On first impressions Firebox seems to be a one-stop-shop for every piece of self-indulgent pile of ‘man-tat’ you could ever hope to find, however on closer inspection you realise they are an organisation who know their customers better than many research companies / ad agencies could ever hope to achieve and … here’s the killer … they don’t just talk about it, they use this knowledge to create things that resonate, engage and excite.
One thing they’ve done recently that I love – and not just because it came from the head of our dear Bazza – is the ‘biscuit tea mug’.
Here is a mug that allows you to internally ‘store’ 3 digestive biscuits [the amount most people tend to use per mug of tea] so you can have a ready supply of dunking material as you walk around the office. Genius.
And how did this come about?
Mainly because Baz saw people continually going backwards and forwards to the kitchen to get tea ‘supplies’ and when he looked into why, he found …
1 They couldn’t dunk if they were holding other biscuits in their hand at the same time
2 Too lazy to get a saucer [more to do with not wanting to wash up/make desk messy]
3 They didn’t want colleagues to see them holding a bunch of biscuits at the same time [especially women]
4 People didn’t like leaving them on their desks [i] dirty [ii] people steal/borrow them.
… so by taking all these learning’s/insights – and adding abit of his disgustingly brilliant creative mind – Bazza came up with the ‘biscuit tea mug’ idea, which we then developed and talked to a distributor about, who inturn licensed it to Firebox and the rest is [fingers crossed] tea-quaffing-biscuit-dunking-money-making history!
Now I know NP has announced he’s just appointed an official office tea mug, but something tells me he’ll want one of these – and I hope he gets it because everytime there’s a sale, we get a % of the cash, hahaha!
Something else Firebox have just launched – this time without the help of Bazza – is the brilliantly mad Wi-Fi t-shirt.
With more and more mobile devices having inbuilt wi-fi – there is a greater need for people to find out if they are in range of a Wi-fi spot.
Now there’s lots of ways to do this – including turning the bloody device on – however as we’re all such a bunch of time-poor bastards/princesses, Firebox has created a t-shirt that tells you there and then whether you can save on your mobile bill and surf via Wi-Fi.
Sure it’s a gimmick and there’s other devices on the market that perform exactly the same sort of thing – however it’s tailor-made for a Firebox type-of customer and more importantly, helps build their brand persona by demonstrating what they believe rather than just saying it via advertising.
Last example interms of creating fate rather than hoping to influence it is this double iPOD charging clock radio …
Many households today have a couple of iPODS and yet more often than not, one tends to dominate the ‘charger’ whereas the other tends to be left till it goes flat.
Well thanks to this device, that no longer has to be the case because this product allows both iPODS to be charged at the same time and – because musical tastes differ – lets each iPOD be set for a different alarm times using different wake-up songs.
The thing is, the insight behind this idea wouldn’t of been something new – it’s probably been around as long as iPODSs – however only one company made something from it whereas the others focused more on aesthetics and/or pointless ‘added value features’.
Now I know you’re thinking, all these examples represent the height of laziness – I mean not holding 3 biscuits in your hand, turning on a Wi-fi device or charging your iPOD is pathetic right? – however this isn’t about humanities devolution towards ‘minimum effort’ [that’s for another day] this is about how insight/consumer understanding can/should be used to help clients develop financially viable products/brands [as opposed to just their advertising] because not only can these things have more impact on society than the majority of communication created, but it also demonstrates the worth of agencies and planners because if we don’t start making more stuff happen, we’re going to be sidelined for ever.