Useful: an encyclopaedia of smalls

The thing that strikes me about the useful web is the wonderful amateurness of it. I love the idea of people beavering away at home writing applications they think are fun or cool to then share, free of charge, with people they've never even met. My favourite space is the ecosystem on netvibes which is like some sort of virtual village fete with thousands of weird and wonderful widgets to liven up your netvibes page. (I like the aquarium).

These are quite cool too:

Pipes
Mosaic pictures made out of flickr photos
The musical genome (I've discovered some great stuff on here)
How geeks show they care
and then there's all the cool stuff on Facebook. Food fights, superpoke, virtual bookshelves and the like.

Now here's the thing. I'm not sure if many of these really count as 'useful'. They're diverting, engaging and certainly fun but not really 'useful' in the practical sense, and I think that's what makes them so great. The web has provided an outlet for all that creativity and invention that previously used to be relegated to the garden shed and only very occasionally recognised by some obscure department of the patent and trademark office. Now, anyone with the desire to create or invent can follow some relatively simple instructions and take their creation to market.

One other observation is that there are more and more sites and services springing up to help people create their own mashups and useful things. I'm sure there's a quote about the fact that with any craze or trend - from the gold rush to the web - the smart money is in the ancillary services. Here's a good one that lets you aggregate clips on of stuff onto one page.

So here are my 'useful' thoughts, based on my observations on what people have to say about M&S undies:

Most people (ok, girls) have underwear for all sorts of different occasions, but one or two 'favourites' that are so comfortable they feel like second skin, but have gone slightly grey from extreme overwear. And the trouble is that by the time you can bring yourself to part with them the chances are the place you bought them from has de-listed them. So how do you go about replacing them? Which stockist still has them? which line is most similar to them in line/style/fit?

So, my idea (for M&S) is a sort of 'encyclopaedia of smalls' where you can search using the catalogue code to find the closest thing on the market to your favourites. And of course it doesn't have to be restricted to underwear it could work for anything ...your favourite skirt, shoes, even makeup. Ideally it would have something of the Dear Annie column about it to give it a bit of personality and of course there would be lots of opportunities for user-gen comments and ideas.

Smalls

I chose M&S as my brand for Buzz and as suggested, signed up to Google alerts, did lots of blog searches and so on. Very quickly, I was inundated with stuff - most of it no doubt very important but frankly immensely dull financial stuff. What I did notice though was that loads of the comments by normal people (as opposed to city analysts and financiers) concerned underwear. Smalls. Undies. Briefs. Shorts. Intimates. Slips. (You know that thing about eskimos having seven words for snow?...What does that say about Brits and their relationship with underwear?) So anyway, I decided to narrow my search a little and see what the great British public had to say about the nation's favourite store for thermals. And there was no shortage of stuff...

Which brings me to my five observations:

1. People are more than happy to talk publicly - even brag - about buying their underwear from M&S whereas they're a teeny bit embarassed to tell the world that they occasionally buy Tshirts there.

2. M&S's appeal is truly universal. Everyone seem to default to M&S for undies, whoever they are. Grannies, mummies, girls on the town, even self-confessed cyber-w**kers who choose to blog about their obsession (think twice before you click through if you're feeling a bit prudish).

3. They may not be the prettiest or the sexiest, but somehow M&S manage to make the most comfortable, comforting, 'shepherd's-pie-on-a-winter's-day' sort of underwear. I can only assume that's part of what makes the brilliantly named Goddess of Laundry keep hers for 10 years.

4. It's that little hint of nerdiness that seem to appeal.

5. People use M&S as a bit of an aladdin's cave for undies. When they need something and don't know where to go for it, it's guaranteed to come up with the goods: 'slips' for people who've never had a reason to buy them before, thermals when the Damart catalogue has run out. As Laura says, 'M&S saves the day'.

And one extra for bonus points:

6. A brand that people are happy to get intimate with everyday is one that's in extraordinarily good health.

Brilliant marketing idea or social experiment?

Why don't I think of things like this?

Really useful stuff

One of the things that I like least about myself is how spectacularly disorganised I am. But I have decided that the time has come to really make an effort to change. This time, I have a secret weapon, thanks to NetVibes and via their rather weird and wonderful ecosystem, rememberthemilk. Can this turn me into Caroline Macpherson? Wait and see...

Item 180100567593 - Sold...£1.85 +50p postage

The lucky dryer fluff is no longer mine. I've parted company with it and off it goes to its new home (fortunately only just up the road at Dare). I am, frankly, amazed that by the time the auction closed the listing had 91 page impressions. On Ebay, you really can sell anything.

Thank you Nads.

32 page views, 9 bids and £1.45 later

Here it is in all its glory. Farewell piece of fluff...

Thank you Kotler

I have always found Kotler's various tomes on marketing fairly hard-going, but faced with the task of having to sell my lucky tumble dryer fluff (to which I was becoming somewhat attached...) I thought I'd go back to basics and revisit my old textbooks for a few tips and strategies. So, I took Kotler et al's advice and started tinkering with the '4Ps' :

• I've 'improved' the product - it now comes with a handy little bag to keep the fluff in and even a genuine 'Certificate of Authenticity' listing all the lucky events attributable to the fluff
• I've clearly positioned the product and defined the key emotional benefit (albeit with a little bit of creative license)
• I've cut the price so it now represents fantastic 'value'
• and finally, I did my best to promote it by emailing a select group of friends who I thought might appreciate the weird and wonderful world of eBay.
  

Now, this last bit might be a bit contentious, but given that one of the tactics we often employ for our clients is to use multiple media channels to take advantage of media multiplier effects, I figured why not? And, I'm delighted (and relieved given I'm supposed to know how to generate response...) to say that following my email, traffic to my page increased by 500% within 6 hours...