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Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Geo-smell-metrics
Thanks Simon McCrudden for sharing this article from the Guardian
Smell Club sniffs out world's best and worst odours
Cat breath, fresh futons and a grandmother's house among the odours catalogued on website 
Smell Club sniffs out world's best and worst odours
Cat breath, fresh futons and a grandmother's house among the odours catalogued on website
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 January 2009 13.20 GMT
- Article history
Ranked for rankness: Cow dung, cat breath and socks. Photograph: Stephen Shaver/EPA
Worried that a trip to Japan might be ruined by the stench of feline halitosis? Convinced that a weekend break in Paris will be all the more memorable for a sniff of herbal soap? Time, then, to consider membership of the Smell Club.
The club's website (Japanese language), is the brainchild of a Japanese firm with an overdeveloped interest in all things nasal, and tags different odours around the world, pinpointing them on a map.
Since its launch last month, the site has gathered more than 160 odours in 68 locations, submitted by 200 members who call themselves "smellists".
The smells submitted so far range from the decidedly fetid – cow dung and old socks – to the quirky, including freshly aired futons and the steam from a rice cooker.
All users have to do is click on a balloon tag on the map or enter a keyword to reveal vital data, such as when best to inhale – or avoid – a particular smell and where to encounter it. The smells are ranked in order of pungency, from light to extra bold.
The people of Fujisawa, south-east of Tokyo, may be surprised to discover that part of their town, which isn't known for cattle farming, is redolent of the "the toasty odour of cow dung".
"We would much prefer to be known for the salty sea breeze," said one resident of the surfing town.
Also best avoided is nearby Kamakura, Japan's ancient capital, where the aroma of temple incense now apparently mingles with that of the bad breath of cats.
The site's operators say they are working on its one obvious weakness: the ability to verify the smellists' claims.
"All that is missing on the web is a smelling function," the spokeswoman Kayo Matsubara told the Associated Press. "That's our next challenge."
Even if that's not possible, the listed smells are eclectic enough to elicit nods of recognition.
One contributor, identified only as Nakkuru, says the smell of her grandmother's house puts her at ease, while Namezaemon declares himself thrilled by a passing woman's pheromones.
Smelly Okada's idea of nasal nirvana, meanwhile, is the aroma of a freshly unsheathed Apple computer.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
BMW hourglass
What’s an hourglass? Oh yes, it’s an ancient time piece, flowing fine sand quietly marking time in a perfectly balanced glass. Or, as everyone should know by now, it is the main prop at Never Stand Still. 
It was the kick-off party to start the countdown for BMW’s European launch of the latest model of BMW 7 series, slated to take place this fall. The car, displayed in the world’s largest hourglass in the Red Square, has not received much coverage but as soon as the construction of the hourglass marvel began four months ago, online buzz about it has been consistent. The 12-meter-high glass contraption was the centerpiece of the party thrown to 400 invited guests and celebrities. At the start of the build-up, more than 180,000 silvery balls concealed the car that was gradually revealed as the balls fell to the lower level.
Moscow is a strong and growing market for BMW, and what better place to strut its latest but the historic location against the backdrop of the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral and G.U.M. – all veterans of many a communist-era motorized military parade. By Tuija Seipell from TheCoolHunter: http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/events 
What is the distinguishing factor of successful people? They always perceive achievements as the starting point for new levels of performance.
BMW took this approach as the central theme for a vehicle presentation of the most unusual kind.
BMW has created the world's largest hourglass at the Red Square in Moscow to showcase its new flagship: the BMW 7 Series.
Never Stand Still.
What is the distinguishing factor of successful people? They always perceive achievements as the starting point for new levels of performance.
BMW took this approach as the central theme for a vehicle presentation of the most unusual kind.
BMW has created the world's largest hourglass at the Red Square in Moscow to showcase its new flagship: the BMW 7 Series.
Human Mirror
Check out their video at this link http://improveverywhere.com/2008/07/06/human-mirror/ Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Crackle.com
I love this idea! How cool would it be to launch Renault's new SUV in Australia by spelling out Koleos - imagine the terrain the vehicle would have to cross, great for product demonstration and PR... if only we came up with it first. Thanks to Media Post Publication for this article found at: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=85700&Nid=44429&p=948634
Crackle.com Hopes For Another Hit
by Tanya Irwin, Monday, Jun 30, 2008 7:00 AM ET
Most of us might not be able to afford the gas to drive around aimlessly this summer, but we can point our browser to Crackle.com and watch comedian Marc Horowitz do it instead.
"The Marc Horowitz Signature Series" chronicles prankster Horowitz as he drives the shape of his signature on a map of the U.S., stopping in 20 towns along the way to stage one-off "community building" (read totally off-the-wall) experiments. In one town he goes door-to-door to personally serve residents a fancy breakfast in bed, and in another, invites residents to gather for a ceremony to "bury their problems"--photos of ex-girlfriends and video game consoles welcome.
The exclusive biweekly series will air new episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays on Sausalito, Calif.-based Crackle, a Sony Pictures Entertainment company. "Marc's latest journey is unpredictable, smart and hilarious--exactly the kind of entertaining original content Crackle's unique audience appreciates and has come to expect," said Crackle GM Jonathan Shambroom in a statement.
"Signature Series" joins Crackle's instant hit "The Jace Hall Show," a comedy and lifestyle interview show hosted by video game personality Jace Hall. In the first 48 hours after the launch on June 5, more than half a million viewers tuned in to Crackle to watch the first show. Since the show's launch success, the first two episodes and their outtakes have gone on to attract over one million viewers.
The show is a 13-part original series with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the hottest game developers, and features rare interviews in which actors, musicians and athletes discuss their lives in the context of the entertainment convergence world.
Part of the viewing frenzy at launch time was fueled by rumors and speculation around Hall's "special glimpse" of the long-awaited "Duke Nukem Forever" video game, which he delivered in episode one. Episode two featured singer/actress Christina Milian as she challenged Jace's gaming skills.
Sony relaunched Grouper as Crackle last summer and turned the video-sharing Web site into a streaming entertainment network geared toward discovering new online talent. The site has some of the highest click-through rates on the Web. Crackle delivers programmed and customized video streams to a global audience via a multi-platform syndication network that includes Sony devices, IPTV, leading social networks and one-click viral Web distribution.
by Tanya Irwin, Monday, Jun 30, 2008 7:00 AM ET
Most of us might not be able to afford the gas to drive around aimlessly this summer, but we can point our browser to Crackle.com and watch comedian Marc Horowitz do it instead.
"The Marc Horowitz Signature Series" chronicles prankster Horowitz as he drives the shape of his signature on a map of the U.S., stopping in 20 towns along the way to stage one-off "community building" (read totally off-the-wall) experiments. In one town he goes door-to-door to personally serve residents a fancy breakfast in bed, and in another, invites residents to gather for a ceremony to "bury their problems"--photos of ex-girlfriends and video game consoles welcome.
The exclusive biweekly series will air new episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays on Sausalito, Calif.-based Crackle, a Sony Pictures Entertainment company. "Marc's latest journey is unpredictable, smart and hilarious--exactly the kind of entertaining original content Crackle's unique audience appreciates and has come to expect," said Crackle GM Jonathan Shambroom in a statement.
"Signature Series" joins Crackle's instant hit "The Jace Hall Show," a comedy and lifestyle interview show hosted by video game personality Jace Hall. In the first 48 hours after the launch on June 5, more than half a million viewers tuned in to Crackle to watch the first show. Since the show's launch success, the first two episodes and their outtakes have gone on to attract over one million viewers.
The show is a 13-part original series with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the hottest game developers, and features rare interviews in which actors, musicians and athletes discuss their lives in the context of the entertainment convergence world.
Part of the viewing frenzy at launch time was fueled by rumors and speculation around Hall's "special glimpse" of the long-awaited "Duke Nukem Forever" video game, which he delivered in episode one. Episode two featured singer/actress Christina Milian as she challenged Jace's gaming skills.
Sony relaunched Grouper as Crackle last summer and turned the video-sharing Web site into a streaming entertainment network geared toward discovering new online talent. The site has some of the highest click-through rates on the Web. Crackle delivers programmed and customized video streams to a global audience via a multi-platform syndication network that includes Sony devices, IPTV, leading social networks and one-click viral Web distribution.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Princess puts pain into cruising
[Thanks to Future Lab for this post]
Princess Puts Pain into Cruising
by: Roger Dooley
Regular cruise ship passengers almost always say that cruising is the least painful way to travel. Once you are on the ship, there’s no packing or unpacking as you visit new destinations, and you are pampered 24/7. Your cabin is straightened and cleaned several times per day, and an endless cornucopia of food is available. Passengers can see live entertainment, attend lectures, play games, or do nothing at all if they so choose. For many, that’s a painless way to spend one’s travel time.
One of the kinds of pain we talk about here at Neuromarketing is the “pain of paying” or “buying pain” – brain scans show that shelling out cash can activate the pain centers in the brain. (See The Pain of Buying.) Cruising generally excels at minimizing this kind of pain, too – once the cruise has been paid for (often many months before the actual cruise), almost everything is included. Elegant dinners, sumptuous buffets, Broadway-style entertainment, and much more is “free” on board the ship. For customers who feel the pain of paying more acutely than others, cruising is about as pain-free as you can get. Want more lobster? It’s free. Care to watch a recently-released movie after the performance by a concert pianist, and then hang out at the disco until dawn? It’s all free. Cruise lines further minimize paying pain by ensuring that their passengers pay for nothing with cash – one’s “cruise card” is a combination room key and shipboard credit card that one can use to buy anything on the ship. (In almost every case, an automatic service charge obviates the need to calculate a tip or even look at the amount one signed for – a great way to further minimize buying pain.)
The nature of cruising is that you are often thrust into contact with other passengers as you share a dinner table, sit next to each other at a show, and so on. Introductions always involve first names and where one lives. By far the most frequent opening conversational gambits are how many cruises one has been on, which lines and itineraries are the best, and what one thinks of the current cruise in the context of past cruises. Aboard the Crown Princess on a cruise I just completed, a new topic cropped up in perhaps half of these random encounters: the small charges that seemed to be mushrooming all over the ship.
There have always been some items that cost extra on most cruise ships – spa and beauty services, alcoholic beverages, photos, and so on. Just about all food has traditionally been part of the price, although many cruise ships have added specialty restaurants with a nominal fee for their use. Occasionally, one finds charges for items served outside the normal dining venues, like ice cream confections and specialty coffees. The Crown Princess, though, seemed to be packed with opportunities to spend a little extra. Brewed coffee, free in most areas of the ship, cost $1 in the coffee shop. And while many food items in the International Café were free, a couple of scoops of gelato would set you back all of $1.50. Tapas were available in the evening for an additional charge. Orange juice was free at breakfast, but ordering fresh-squeezed juice in another venue cost $2.75. If you wanted to spend four hours in a relaxing pool area called the Sanctuary, your cruise card would be billed $10. To eat at the Crown Grill steakhouse, a specialty dining venue, a $25 charge applied. And, if you were audacious enough to order lobster, a further $9 fee would be assessed.
I thought at first that it was a minor ratcheting up of the normal trivial charges, but the “nickel and diming” aspect was raised by so many fellow passengers that it was clear that Princess was putting the pain back into cruising. The odd thing is how meaningless most of these charges are. A typical passenger paid thousands of dollars for the cruise, and most of the passengers I met were well-heeled enough to not care in the least about an extra dollar or two. Many I spoke to clearly had annual travel budgets in the tens of thousands of dollars. Nevertheless, they WERE irritated by these tiny charges. If you asked them, they would say it’s the principle that’s involved – they didn’t like being subjected to miniscule additional charges after paying thousands for what they thought was a more inclusive cruise. In neuromarketing terms, though, their brain’s pain center was getting a tweak when they had to pay for something they might well have expected to be provided at no charge.
It isn’t clear to me what Princess is up to with this strategy. Is it even worth processing a $1 or $1.50 charge ticket? It seems likely that this is a “throttling” or demand control strategy – the gelato line might be long if it was free, but just about non-existent if there was a small charge. (Indeed, Princess employs a different kind of demand control strategy with their “secret” ice cream service. For a one hour period each afternoon, they serve free ice cream to passengers along with sundae fixings. What they don’t do is publicize this in their daily schedules. Not only is there no signage for this daily event, but to reach the ice cream service passengers need to ignore and walk around a “Dining Room Closed” sign.)
I can’t help thinking that almost all of the cruisers I spoke to would have paid an extra $20, or $50 – a trivial sum considering the entire cost of the cruise, air travel, shore excursions, and so on – if all of these niggling charges went away. In general, people prefer a single lump-sum price to a series of pay-as-you-go transactions, even if they aren’t really saving any money by paying that way. (See Painful Sushi and Other Pricing Blunders.) Would consumption of coffee-shop coffee and specialty ice cream increase? Of course… but on a ship with continuous and unlimited food availability, how much more are people really going to consume?
I’m sure it’s tempting to control demand and pad the bottom line a bit with charges for “special” items, but if cruising is to be perceived as the most painless way to travel, the pain of paying needs to be a key consideration. Those extra-charge items need to be restricted to a small number of products and services that passengers would reasonably expect to pay for separately. All cruise lines are diligent about collecting customer feedback after each cruise, and I expect that Princess will hear what I heard from so many passengers. (We’re not the only ones to notice this trend - veteran travel writer Arthur Frommer has also weighed in on the topic - see Frommer blasts cruise ship nickel-and-diming.)
Original Post: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/princess-puts-pain-into-cruising.htm
http://blog.futurelab.net/2008/05/princess_puts_pain_into_cruisi.html
Princess Puts Pain into Cruising
by: Roger Dooley
Regular cruise ship passengers almost always say that cruising is the least painful way to travel. Once you are on the ship, there’s no packing or unpacking as you visit new destinations, and you are pampered 24/7. Your cabin is straightened and cleaned several times per day, and an endless cornucopia of food is available. Passengers can see live entertainment, attend lectures, play games, or do nothing at all if they so choose. For many, that’s a painless way to spend one’s travel time.
One of the kinds of pain we talk about here at Neuromarketing is the “pain of paying” or “buying pain” – brain scans show that shelling out cash can activate the pain centers in the brain. (See The Pain of Buying.) Cruising generally excels at minimizing this kind of pain, too – once the cruise has been paid for (often many months before the actual cruise), almost everything is included. Elegant dinners, sumptuous buffets, Broadway-style entertainment, and much more is “free” on board the ship. For customers who feel the pain of paying more acutely than others, cruising is about as pain-free as you can get. Want more lobster? It’s free. Care to watch a recently-released movie after the performance by a concert pianist, and then hang out at the disco until dawn? It’s all free. Cruise lines further minimize paying pain by ensuring that their passengers pay for nothing with cash – one’s “cruise card” is a combination room key and shipboard credit card that one can use to buy anything on the ship. (In almost every case, an automatic service charge obviates the need to calculate a tip or even look at the amount one signed for – a great way to further minimize buying pain.)
The nature of cruising is that you are often thrust into contact with other passengers as you share a dinner table, sit next to each other at a show, and so on. Introductions always involve first names and where one lives. By far the most frequent opening conversational gambits are how many cruises one has been on, which lines and itineraries are the best, and what one thinks of the current cruise in the context of past cruises. Aboard the Crown Princess on a cruise I just completed, a new topic cropped up in perhaps half of these random encounters: the small charges that seemed to be mushrooming all over the ship.
There have always been some items that cost extra on most cruise ships – spa and beauty services, alcoholic beverages, photos, and so on. Just about all food has traditionally been part of the price, although many cruise ships have added specialty restaurants with a nominal fee for their use. Occasionally, one finds charges for items served outside the normal dining venues, like ice cream confections and specialty coffees. The Crown Princess, though, seemed to be packed with opportunities to spend a little extra. Brewed coffee, free in most areas of the ship, cost $1 in the coffee shop. And while many food items in the International Café were free, a couple of scoops of gelato would set you back all of $1.50. Tapas were available in the evening for an additional charge. Orange juice was free at breakfast, but ordering fresh-squeezed juice in another venue cost $2.75. If you wanted to spend four hours in a relaxing pool area called the Sanctuary, your cruise card would be billed $10. To eat at the Crown Grill steakhouse, a specialty dining venue, a $25 charge applied. And, if you were audacious enough to order lobster, a further $9 fee would be assessed.
I thought at first that it was a minor ratcheting up of the normal trivial charges, but the “nickel and diming” aspect was raised by so many fellow passengers that it was clear that Princess was putting the pain back into cruising. The odd thing is how meaningless most of these charges are. A typical passenger paid thousands of dollars for the cruise, and most of the passengers I met were well-heeled enough to not care in the least about an extra dollar or two. Many I spoke to clearly had annual travel budgets in the tens of thousands of dollars. Nevertheless, they WERE irritated by these tiny charges. If you asked them, they would say it’s the principle that’s involved – they didn’t like being subjected to miniscule additional charges after paying thousands for what they thought was a more inclusive cruise. In neuromarketing terms, though, their brain’s pain center was getting a tweak when they had to pay for something they might well have expected to be provided at no charge.
It isn’t clear to me what Princess is up to with this strategy. Is it even worth processing a $1 or $1.50 charge ticket? It seems likely that this is a “throttling” or demand control strategy – the gelato line might be long if it was free, but just about non-existent if there was a small charge. (Indeed, Princess employs a different kind of demand control strategy with their “secret” ice cream service. For a one hour period each afternoon, they serve free ice cream to passengers along with sundae fixings. What they don’t do is publicize this in their daily schedules. Not only is there no signage for this daily event, but to reach the ice cream service passengers need to ignore and walk around a “Dining Room Closed” sign.)
I can’t help thinking that almost all of the cruisers I spoke to would have paid an extra $20, or $50 – a trivial sum considering the entire cost of the cruise, air travel, shore excursions, and so on – if all of these niggling charges went away. In general, people prefer a single lump-sum price to a series of pay-as-you-go transactions, even if they aren’t really saving any money by paying that way. (See Painful Sushi and Other Pricing Blunders.) Would consumption of coffee-shop coffee and specialty ice cream increase? Of course… but on a ship with continuous and unlimited food availability, how much more are people really going to consume?
I’m sure it’s tempting to control demand and pad the bottom line a bit with charges for “special” items, but if cruising is to be perceived as the most painless way to travel, the pain of paying needs to be a key consideration. Those extra-charge items need to be restricted to a small number of products and services that passengers would reasonably expect to pay for separately. All cruise lines are diligent about collecting customer feedback after each cruise, and I expect that Princess will hear what I heard from so many passengers. (We’re not the only ones to notice this trend - veteran travel writer Arthur Frommer has also weighed in on the topic - see Frommer blasts cruise ship nickel-and-diming.)
Original Post: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/princess-puts-pain-into-cruising.htm
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