If you ask consumers, there is almost nothing they apparently won’t pay more for. But in reality many of these add ons don’t change behaviour. Tip: don’t use a simple yes / no format in surveys. Instead ask consumers to trade off an offer versus something else.
isev-admin
In 2024, Wimbledon tennis introduced the ‘overheard at Wimbledon’ YouTube series – video clips featuring fans while mic’d up at the event. Given tennis is struggling to attract audiences, especially after the retirement of Federer & Nadal, it’s a simple yet way of making the sport more fun and accessible. The series received over 12 million views in 2 weeks.
The prestigious Gilbert et Gaillard wine contest was won by a €2.50 bottle, disguised as a premium product with a fancy name (‘Chateau Colombier’) and an eye-catching label.
When someone wins the lottery, it increases the chance of their neighbour going bankrupt: they see the good fortune next door and feel pressure to accumulate more assets of their own, especially flashy purchases like cars, that they simply can’t afford.
The WFH genie is slowly going back in the bottle. The number of companies requiring employees to turn up three or more days a week rose from 67% in 2023 to 75% in 2024. Nearly one in three companies insist that employees are in the office for a full five days. And 83% of business leaders polled by KPMG, an auditor, say they expect a full return to the office by 2027.
During Covid-19 it felt like everyone was working from home. But this was a classic case of marketing myopia. Even at the height of the pandemic, less than half of British workers did so from home.
In a study, led by chef Heston Blumenthal, those who were told it was ice cream didn’t like it – given it was pink they were expecting the taste of strawberry, not fish. But when it was introduced as ‘chilled salmon mousse’, to give people a fair warning, the reaction was much more positive.
Britain wouldn’t have cracked the German code without the Enigma machine – but they wouldn’t have done it without human creativity either. To narrow down the 159 quintillion possible combinations, the Bletchley Park team made educated guesses at certain words the message would contain; for instance they knew that the German forces sent out a daily ‘weather report’, and they knew that most messages would contain the phrase ‘heil Hitler’.
After smartphones were meant to kill off cameras, the Xiaomi 15 is bringing them back. It allows you to attach lenses and shutter buttons, giving reviving the old-fashioned point-and-shoot feel.
Several brands, like Barry’s Bootcamp, Tesco and Arsenal F.C. now use the same ‘year in review’ concept, but none resonate as well as Spotify’s. For one, music is heavily influenced by moods, trends and nostalgia, while buying groceries is a functional process based on needs and cost. Tesco’s Clubcard Unwrapped only serves to remind people how much of their income is spent on (often unhealthy) food. Essentially, these brands are mostly not limited by their ideas – they’re limited by their category.
On YouTube, fame is not the norm: a tiny proportion of channels (<1%) have more than a million subscribers.
Zappos, the online retailer, tells its call centre employees that they can never use a script, and they can never upsell. This unconventional approach makes the experience distinctly human, and has established Zappos as a leader in customer service.