I was showing off my iPhone to my uncle in SF the night before my flight back to Atlanta and decided to try checking-in for my flight from Delta’s Mobile site.  What i didn’t expect to see was a link to print a boarding pass. I took a screen grab of the boarding pass for safekeeping.
It uses the next generation of 2D barcodes that can store a lot more information than the linear barcodes we’re used to seeing.

Knowing I shouldn’t hang my hat on something so new, I printed a regular boarding pass at the airport to make it past security (TSA highlighter on my iPhone screen probably wouldn’t work so well). When I asked a Delta rep at the gate, it seemed like they had heard about it, but hadn’t seen someone come through with one of these new boarding passes yet.  They followed me up to the scanner at the jetway door only to find that the scanner wasn’t able to read the new barcode.  Totally possible that it was user error, but I wasn’t about to earn the ire of everyone behind me trying to board while I tinkered with my mobile boarding pass.

If anyone else tries the Delta mobile boarding pass and is able to get it to work successfully, I’d love to hear about it.

Another reason why this is exciting (or at least interesting) is that I could take a coupon with me on my phone to any retailer that is equipped with barcode scanners that can handle 2D barcodes. No more Sunday paper coupon clippings everywhere, plus imagine the benefit to advertisers b/c of the amount of information that could be embedded with the 2D barcode on a coupon.

Shhh … don’t tell anyone, but there were folks here at Engauge that were watching the US Open playoff online, hanging on every stroke of play in arguably the most exciting major championship in golf - ever. This back-and-forth duel of Rocco Mediate (aka Every Man) vs. Tiger Woods (aka the Machine) was drama of epic proportions.

In the end, it was Tiger. He won in spite of doctors probably telling him his knee wasn’t ready, playing through his knee pain, using his driver as a walking stick.

And yet, the morning after this emotional, gut-wrenching victory, Nike sends out this email that, IMO, (whether intentional or not) seemed to ascribe Tiger’s victory to his Nike driver, ball and shoes.

To whoever was responsible for that copy: Too bad - you ’shanked’ that opportunity. A few reasons why I think this:

• Tiger’s driving was atrocious.
• Tiger’s Titleist putter helped keep him in contention.
• It was Tiger’s mental toughness and determination that shone through more than ever before.

Yes, he had his TW and swoosh gear on the whole time, but c’mon. The most you’d want to do is position yourself alongside Tiger as maybe an after-thought, a “btw” or “ps”. Am I over-reacting?

I shop at Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic (clearance items). 95% of my wardrobe is stamped with one of these three tags. Having said that, I had never shopped online for the clothing because it just never suited me for some reason - maybe because I hated the idea of paying for shipping. (The irony now is that shipping may cost less than the gasoline I’d use to get to a retail location!)

Recently, I tried ordering jeans recently at Gap online only to find that they were out of stock. Along with an apology, I got what they call an “Options Card” that can be used across all the brands. Then, I got an email announcing that they had free shipping and a single shopping cart for all four of their brands - Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Piperlime.

So I click through and find this clean, simple site navigation that gives me easy access across all of their online stores. I cruised through the Gap store and found nothing. Click the next tab and I was in Old Navy. Click the next tab and I was in Banana Republic. No mall cruising, no shopping bags. ONE shopping cart, ONE checkout with my Options Card and FREE shipping.

Long story short - I could handle this kind of shopping again in the future; it works for me and it’s convenient.

And for those of you too young to remember, the title of this post was a reference to an old Gap jingle that continues to reside in the recesses of my brain. If you remember it, now it’s stuck in your head, too. Talk about sticky branding.

As I was eating my spaghetti leftovers yesterday for lunch at my desk (sad, I know), I came across news that Arby’s is merging with Wendy’s.

Suddenly a vision came to me and I thought I’d begin the process of voicing what awesome combinations of lunch could come forth from such a melding of quick service restaurant chains  (this would make Arbys + Wendy’s into #3 behind the other two - you know who they are).

Combo #1 - Beef ‘n Cheddar + Vanilla Frosty

And for the marketing spin, how’s this for a new tagline:  “I’m thinking this is WAAAAY better than McD and BK”  (it’s awful, I know, but it’s all I could conjure up on leftover lunch).

Happy Lunch Hour to all - would love to hear other visions of combos.

Maybe it’s just me (I doubt it), but as concerned as I might be about the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election, I don’t think I have the mental, emotional or intestinal fortitude to sit through hours upon hours of televised speeches and media coverage to keep on top of what the candidates are saying. I would love to see a ‘CliffsNotes‘ version of all the speeches.

Soon after President George W. Bush’s final State of the Union speech, our VP of Client Services, Shannon Delaney, shared a link to a tag cloud that was based upon the transcript:

At a glance, you would conceivably be able to see what the gist of the speech was. If you believe that the most important issue in any given speech gets the most play, you would expect to see words associated with that issue stand out in the tag cloud.

After seeing this tag cloud, I wondered whether a tag cloud could help track each candidate’s position statements on a variety of issues across multiple speeches over the course of the campaign.

Better yet, wouldn’t it be impossibly too simple and cool if we could slap all the transcripts of all the speeches made by one candidate, run it through a tag cloud utility and … PRESTO … see what each candidate is consistently saying at a glance.

I realize that a tag cloud doesn’t do everything for you in preparation for an election, but I would hope, even in this wondrous age of information and technology, to take a candidate at their word.

The holidays are upon us and it looks like some folks are getting into the spirit of all things bright and twinkly by adding some of their own twinkle to their emails.

November 19 - AT&T recently sent me an email with a row of phones they were hawking as part of a holiday promotion. Low and behold, an animated .gif for all to see. Twinkle. Suddenly, visions of dancing cell phones in my head.

November 20 - Apple sends me an email announcing their ‘Black Friday’ sale event. For email clients like Outlook that don’t support animated .gifs, the email looked like this. However, in web mail clients like gmail, the animated .gif worked just fine and twinkled like this. (Santa - send me my iPhone)

November 23 - REI sends me this email that speaks to both skiers and snowboarders equally (because really, you’re either one or the other). Double twinkle.

So what does this mean? I’m not sure and would love some feedback on whether the animated .gif is a seasonal special like Starbucks Christmas Blend (my fave) or a new email trend.

If we’re honest about human nature, we gravitate towards ‘blingy’ and ‘blinky’ things, and my eye automatically went after the twinkly things in these emails.

You are a marketer. You send a promotional email - time-sensitive, special deal - only to find that the click-through rate was abyssmal. As you begin the witch-hunt for why the message performed so poorly, you discover that Your ESP and their email server are found to be innocent. 

What if your creative piece is responsible? In this age of image-blocking, the importance of email usability is magnified. To illustrate my point, I submit these three samples:

Exhibit A:  The worst case scenario and truly the default view in Outlook 2007 (and the way this email first appeared in my inbox).

Exhibit B: What happens to the email when it is delivered to Outlook 2007 with a common preview pane size and images turned on (today’s lowest common denominator for email software due to it’s MS Word-based rendering engine)

You see who it’s from, but you’ve probably seen other stuff from them.  You’re probably still left thinking, “So what?”

Exhibit C: The designer’s intended creative execution of a promotional email.

Bottom Line:  Send emails designed like this one back to the kitchen every time. Your emails will perform better and you’ll know that you’ve optimized for usability.