Peperami and Unilever have a crowdsourced* winner

Two winners, in fact.

Read Idea Bounty's interviews with them.

*Yes, it's semantics but is this crowdsourcing? Isn't the term supposed to refer to a common solution to which everyone adds? Check out the definition of the word and make up your own mind.

Have you had customer service this good?

Here's a customer service email I received from hungryhouse, an online takeaway service.

It's worth reading as an example of the kind of customer service we should all be getting.

In fact, this email probably goes above and beyond the call of duty as it's possible I made a mistake (although even if I did, what happened illustrates the importance of a landing page that echoes the offer you've just read.) You'll see what I mean in a minute.

OK so hungryhouse.co.uk lets you order your takeaway online.

I'm not quite sure why it's better than calling up your local restaurant direct but I gave it a go on Friday because I happened to see a 10% offer RTed (that's retweeted for all you twitter haters - come on, keep up).

So I clicked the link and went through to hungryhouse.co.uk. Within seconds I'd found our local curry house that I was going to order from anyway, so I thought I'd try hungryhouse and save some money.

Trouble was, because I never saw a big button that said '10% discount', I had no way of knowing that I'd secured that deal. I don't know what my order usually costs and I was going to add it all up to see if I got the money off.

So I was left wondering whether I got the deal at all. And I thought I'd just paid exactly the same price for a longer service as it would take time to pass on the order to the restaurant.

Actually, we found the order go through immediately and I'd say ordering through hungryhouse was just as quick as calling the restaurant direct. I can even see the benefit of browsing the menu online (many local takeaways do not have a dedicated website), plus, hopefully, you won't get any Chinese whispers over the phone (no pun intended) and so hopefully, you won't get any mistakes.

Well, there's still room for human error, as I discovered when we were left naan-less and in posession of two, not one, mint yoghurts (I know, I know, how did we manage?)

However, I emailed hungryhouse and received an email back within an hour or two. Here it is:

Hi Hayes,

I'm really sorry to hear you had some trouble using our special offer tonight.
The discount is definitely up and running. Provided that you clicked on the link
and chose to pay by card, 10% of your order value should have been deducted.

I completely understand your frustration. Rest assured that I have passed your
information on to our IT team so they can investigate what went wrong.

As a gesture of apology for this disappointment, I would like to offer you
£2.00 off a future order with us - if you're willing to consider giving us
another chance to serve you better. To redeem this discount, you need to upgrade
to a member account at URL
- it only takes a few seconds and it's free! £2.00 will then be automatically
deducted from the next order you pay for by card. Please note however, that
unused credit automatically expires after 90 days.

This slightly more than covers the discount you should have received on your
order tonight.

Thanks for ordering at hungryhouse and for bringing this issue to our attention.
Once again, I'm really sorry for this incovenience. I hope you enjoy your meal
from 3 Spice and have a great weekend.

Kind regards,

Whitney

help@hungryhouse.co.uk
http://hungryhouse.co.uk

http://twitter.com/hungryhouse
http://facebook.com/hungryhouse

Isn't that good? Hungryhouse - give it a go. And pray something goes wrong so you can get one of those lovely emails from Whitney.

PS. I even told hungryhouse about the missing naan in my feedback email, which comes soon after your food. Another email from Whitney, this time to tell me she'd credited my card the cost of the bread. What do you think of that, then?

All TV ads are shit

Or at least that's the way I felt watching the ad break during Dancing with the Devil last night on More4.



Did you see it? I think it was one of the most interesting docs I've ever seen. It got up close and personal with some of Rio's biggest drug lords. And whether you believed them or not, most of them said they'd like nothing better than to get out of the life - if only they had an alternative.

In addition to football, funk and samba, one alternative was the church, by the way. And that's how we got such incredible access to the traffickers - by following a pastor who used to sell drugs and carry guns himself.

So maybe any ads that broke up this amazing film would have seemed shite in comparison.

Only I got really down. Like actually questioning my whole career. Isn't advertising shit? Wasn't being a copywriter shit? Wasn't I shit?

Then this came on and my belief in advertising was restored:



What do you think?

My headline for Twitter's first press ad

You can't read everything but you can read the people that do.

Or should that be 'people who do'?

Any grammar freaks in the house?

7 rules of brainstorming

Like Wal, I've been in many brainstorming sessions.

And like Wal, I've never really been in any that ever seemed particularly effective.

I've read up on the subject before and I seem to remember a few tips on how long you should do it and how many people to involve - and yes, I do think it's important you set a few parameters - or rules.

Here are 7 rules of brainstorming from IDEO, the design and innovation consultants, courtesy of Wal at Hyper Island.

Fucking awesome social Media guru

Via Rik Brown at BBH, via Ad Contrarian, via Ad Broad, this movie was made by a freelance journalist in Dublin, named Markham Nolan. Props!

Just as interesting is that it's made with a tool called Xtranormal whose strapline is 'if you can type, you can make movies' - couldn't have put it better myself.

Make the goal fun

I've posted before aboutthis book and the story about a painted fly in a urinal that encouraged men to aim for it and therefore not splash man wee all over the floor.

Well here's another great idea, via @BBHLabs on Twitter.

Problem: Everyone's using the escalator instead of taking a short, healthy climb.
Solution: Make climbing the stairs fun.



How's your Swedish? Read more here.