Event Registration Rewards

Whenever an event announces that the first X registrants will receive some kind of swag, a gold-rush stampede begins. More often than not, it’s the people chasing rewards (they are quick and ruthless), not the event itself.

Most of these events include a free account to test an application, tool, or platform by building a small project. That’s where the real value lies, and the reward structure should reflect it. Instead of rewarding speed at registration, reward actual usage:

1. First finisher → backpack + t-shirt + mug

2. Next 2 finishers within 1 hour → backpack + choice of t-shirt or mug

3. Next 10 finishers within 24 hours → t-shirt + mug

4. Next 10 finishers within 72 hours → mug

5. All other finishers (within 7 days) → entered into a draw for 100 mugs

6. All attendees (even if they didn’t finish) → entered into a separate draw for 100 mugs, to feel included and not discouraged, next time they will do better

Yes, this approach takes more resources to organize, but the outcome is worth it. Instead of rewarding fast clickers, it rewards people who actually explore the product. Some of them may end up liking, even loving the product, becoming its strongest evangelists.

After all, in technology, it’s not what you learn but what you ship that counts.

Fritz-kola

Who comes with these ads needs to be rewarded by buying the product and I did. It was not easy to find it but I persisted, and nothing special, the same artificial taste. I will stick with Pepsi if I want to drink a cola.

Barbershops

Hair cut: left - 10 EU, right - 12 EUR

Why? 

The right barbershop offers WiFi (who needs it in the day and age of plentiful data on phone plans) and free coffee (never saw anyone drinking it and I walked by so many times).

Could the owner be the same?! Did they want to capture both the Windows and the Apple crowd.

In fact once I saw a barber in the cheaper shop accidentally drop the scissors while cutting a client's hair. He just picked them up and continued cutting hair. 

If this had happened to me I would have kept quiet and thought "Yes, what to expect, I chose the cheaper price and this is what I get!"

However, if the same had happened in the more expensive barbershop I would have expected the barber to disinfect/clean the dropped pair of scissors and if not I would have made a big stink that would have not served any purpose in the end as the damage had already done by then (dirty scissors cutting my hair).

My deepest fear is that the barber would have behaved the same.

Hence, as I need neither WiFi nor coffee and if the barber would still use the same dirty scissors the rational economic decision is to go to the cheaper barbershop.

'Aboot' instead of 'About'

 I wonder whether it was Ryan Reynolds' idea :).

https://www.maximumeffort.com/aboot

Cervesa

I was in a store to buy a bier, I didn't really know what to, so many brands, until I saw:

I did not hesitate one second more and I grabbed it, a simple name that drew me instantly to it.

Of course, the price helped a lot, but if another beer at the same price had a fancy name, I'd have thought it was crap.

Coca Cola Hellenic - Preferred language for communication

Well done, I chose Armenian as it was the first language in the list and I have received communication in this language.

Ikea - Preferred language for communication

They ask so I wanted to test it, I chose German, wanted to make it easy, as I could have chosen Croatian or Hungarian :).

                                                

And no German, only very little Swedish.