Amazon Remembers

I've been buying books from amazon on my phone for a decent length of time now. But only just downloaded the amazon iPhone app. As my previous amazon experiences on my phone have been seamless, I expected as much from the app. I was not disappointed.

But they have a nice extra. Called Amazon Remembers. You take a photo (of anything) with your iPhone and click submit on your phone screen. Then the nice folk in Amazon scurry off and see if they can find it for you in their store. When they do, they'll send you an email - so you can buy it from them. They'll also post your photo with a link to the product on your amazon.co.uk homepage. Nice eh.

I tried it with a book cover. And it worked fine. As you'd expect with a book I guess. I also took a snap of the front of a Samsung netbook. And they found this too. I'm impressed.

It's a wonderful example of making an app that thinks intelligently about the customer circumstances - and not just a replication of the internet for your phone. No doubt they'll get a higher share of my wallet.

Wired's 20 favourite iPhone Apps

Wired's 20 favourite iPhone Apps here (staff picks). Dropbox sounds good if you haven't heard of it.

Aim for the heart, not head...like Mr Tayto

I was asked to present on some brand and marketing stuff earlier this month. I spoke about brands needing to be interesting if they want us to be interested in them.

Nothing new here. But still not a whole lot of interesting stuff going on. It might be a bit of the 'rational' versus 'emotional' appeal debate. Most ads lead with the rational reasons to buy stuff - the benefits, features and unique selling proposition.

While my marketing origins are in direct marketing, influenced by likes of Claude Hopkins, I side with the folk that believe emotional advertising is more effective than ads that lead solely with rational, logical benefits. I'd encourage you to pop over here to read what the highly respected Paul Feldwick has to say about this.

The recent Mr Tayto autobiography is a lovely example of this. Very charming. Made me smile. I'm sure it has ignited a few conversations.

I'm still the mayor.

Image courtesy of foursquare

It's true. I've been the mayor of the coffee dock in O2's offices for the past week or two.

Uncontested.

Well, Kevin has tried to steal my spot on occasion, but he gets distracted by the authentic Il Valentino coffees every morning - of which he claims he is mayor of. And you can only have so many coffees in one day.

Geo-tagging itself is interesting. But foursquare is more - it is also playful. It will be interesting when shops, pubs, restaurants and other venues here start using it. Yes to reward customers and their buying behaviour - as both Damien Mulley and Kevin Dunne talked about recently.

But also for a bit of fun.

One of the funniest things I saw in the US was employees of a fast food outlet playing paper-rock-scissors with customers. They played double or quits for an extra burger or chips. Funny stuff - that gets talked about. I stole the idea and did something similar for call credit in our stores a couple of years ago.

This playfulness works beautifully with foursquare. And will help companies show their personal side. And bringing together the real humans working for the brand with the real humans buying the brand is one of the things I think digital is perfect for.

Dave Trott's book - Creative Mischief

Kevin gave me the heads up that Dave Trott had a book out. Really don't know how I missed that. Don't even think Mr Trott mentioned it on his blog. Such modesty.

It is a collection of some of his blog posts. A small book - about 190 pages. I bought a couple of copies for the office. And suspect I'll buy a few more, once they go missing. Anyway, if you're a fan, do buy this.

Any grads out there trying to get their first job in marketing?

Any grads out there trying to get their first job in marketing? I don't have any jobs going. But if you are ambitious, ready to work extremely hard to get a job and willing to take a long-term view of a marketing career - I'm offering to help you find one. For free of course.

If you're interested, drop me an email.

(If on the off chance I get swamped with emails, I'll work a first-come-first-served system or work out something fair.)

The last refuge of the unimaginative

Saw this and thought about the many brand guardianship conversations you have. Don't get me wrong. I'm actually all up for brand guardianship. But I like Absolut's approach to it.

Innovative outdoor ad

Saw this while in Madrid last month. The message is about women trapped in domestic violence. Very innovative use of the back-lit format. Simple but striking

Any brands doing good radio ads?

Can anybody think of any brands that consistently do good advertising on the radio?

Just wondering.

Can you see this?

A friend suggested I change this blog's name to "Random thoughts on Outdoor ads". Point taken.

But there still seems to be a huge number of outdoor ads that get it wrong (that don't follow the basic principles). The 6-sheet poster in this photo is facing out onto the road, so is targeting folks in cars and buses. But is it not very difficult to see?