This weeks ignition 5 from Claire and Vanessa

Our five picks of the week, enjoy,

Vanessa

This weeks Ignition 5 from Jenny and Vanessa

Monday = ignition 5,

Enjoy,

Vanessa

Ireland by the Numbers

Here’s something I thought was worth sharing; it seems that in the midst of all this doom and gloom there are still some things we can be proud of!

Claire

What is an influencer??

Really nice short video with gorgeous soundtrack set in New York. Subject: influencers.

Vanessa

Toilets are for Customers’ use only

Oh dear. I’m always a little sad when I see this sign, especially when I see it in an establishment I quite like. It always makes me think, “Hey, restaurant! Why don’t you want me to like you?”

I consider myself a customer of lots of businesses, regardless of the frequency with which I use them. If I go to a coffee shop once every two weeks for 6 months, I am a customer of that coffee shop. I might not be known by their staff particularly, but I feel I should be able to use their bathroom on a day when i’m not buying a latte.

Imagine your favourite sandwich chain, (or coffee chain) puts up this sign in their bathrooms. Shortly afterwards, you walk into a branch  and try to use the bathroom, only to be told that no, toilets are for customers’ use only. Do you have it out with the manager? That argument would never be useful, and would only ever end with you saying: “But its only a bathroom, why are you being so weird about a bathroom?”. Bottom line, I have more to spend my time on than arguing with people in coffee shops.

The point is, I would rather see this sign:

 

Claire

Monday’s ignition 5 from Alan and Vanessa

Monday morning brainfood,

Vanessa

This weeks ignition 5 from Laragh and Vanessa

Your Monday morning ignition fix,

Vanessa

Some things are better off line…

I was at a Chromeo gig in Tripod, in Dublin last Thursday night. And maybe it’s been a while since I had been to an intimate gig…but it was just brilliant. The band was amazing. Two performers, a funky backdrop of lights, plastic legs on the keyboards and a great fan experience. The place was jammed, and we didn’t have to be there 5 hours in advance to fight our way towards the stage to make out the musicians’ faces.

O2 Blueroom are hosting a private Pixie Lott concert tomorrow night and streaming it live online. 200 competition winners will attend the gig while O2 are charging the unlucky non-attendees €5 to watch it streamed live online….Hmmm…..I’m suspicious of this tactic. What is the uptake of this kind of offer? How many people would enjoy the experience of watching a concert on their laptop, most likely alone??  And on a Tuesday night…?? And the ones that do decide to view the streamed gig, would they bother doing the same again? It just seems to defeat the purpose of a concert to me. It’s a nice brand move – opening the concert up to everyone (for a small fee) – I get it – and great for super hardcore fans who cant physically make it, but will it really take off?

We all know the internet rules the world (exaggeration) and that everything is either digital or mobile and most are both or will be. But I think there is no escaping the physical – the actually being there when something happens, the social gathering that isn’t via Facebook. I am open to change and moving forward, but the best brand moves are still the ones that involve a physical interaction with a customer. The phone call, the hand shake, the then and now, the tripod stamp on your wrist,  the singing/dancing with fellow Chromeo fans while your favourite electro-pop band are within reach.

Vanessa

My Information Rehab

My iPhone recently stopped working, which has been very annoying. I have been an iPhone zealot for well over two years now, and people have remarked over recent weeks how strange it is to see me with another phone. This is the power of the iPhone; it has such presence that I look strange without it.

Ok, so above picture is somewhat disingenuous; the phone I am using now is new and is no slouch, it actually has a lot of the same capabilities as the iPhone. My email works fine, but for some reason the internet browser doesn’t. It’s all a bit clunky anyway, so I haven’t looked into getting the browser sorted. After two years of comfortable touch- screeny slidyness, all those little buttons so close together bother me quite a lot.

For the first week or so, I suffered withdrawal. During a visit to the cinema, I found myself thinking, “Oh, he was in that Melanie Griffiths movie…no wait, that was Goldie Hawn, no, wait….. which one is which again? Oh no, he wasn’t in it, that was the other guy…”. I was powerless. Access to the websites with the information that could help me was all the way at home, on my laptop, which takes 5 minutes to start up. For the last two years I’ve happily opened up my IMDB app and found the information I needed in 20 seconds flat (while doing my best to hide the glow from my fellow cinemagoers, of course).

Now, three weeks on, I feel like I’ve been through rehab and come out the other side. For the first time in two years, I don’t want to use my phone. I will when I need to, obviously, but it is no longer an extension of my arm.

I now realise that I had become an information junkie. Anything I wanted to know I could find out in an instant. Dropping outside of 3G coverage for half an hour would drive me mad. But then, each hit had begun to bring me less and less satisfaction. It had become too easy. Now instead, I store up my questions to ask my computer later on. For me, this is the equivalent of trawling through archives in a musty library. There may only be a few hours in the difference, but that time delay has restored value to the information, and has made finding it out a little bit special again.

Claire

This weeks Ignition 5 from Clodagh and Vanessa

Text EURO to 57501 for Unicef,

Vanessa