How Sainsburys are Coming into the 21st Century

I was in my local Sainsburys the other day, doing my shopping (what else?). As I was at the checkout I noticed a few things.

First, you've probably noticed at the checkout gift cards for iTunes, or something similar, however what I'd noticed this time was what I want to call a "student food card". This is a two part card, one for topping up the account, one for using credit from the account. This is plainly aimed at the concerned parent who wants to make sure their kids are eating properly whilst at university. Those parents who do not want to put money into their kids account so they can spend it on nights out and pot noddles for dinner (though the flaw here being that Sainsburys sell booze too, but we'll brush over that). I did think though that this could be used the other way round too, what about someone with an aging parent or perhaps a lowly paid sibling. Wouldn't you want to make sure they were eating properly too?

So, I thought that was cool, but there was a little more to come.

Second, there were no bags at the checkout, I told the cashier who told me they'd stopped putting bags out. She pointed me to a sign which I'd ignored as an 'out of bags' sign, saying as much. Sainsburys in environmental awareness are trying to get their customers to reuse their bags, so you now have to ask for carrier bags. They've given store points away for ages for reusing bags but obviously isn't having the desired affect.

One of the things they're doing to help their customers is providing a free SMS reminder service. You send a message saying when you usually go shopping and it sends you a reminder a few hours before, saying not to forget your bags.

This could be a tentative first step, but I can see much more here. They're only providing this until the end of the year, but how about linking this to my store points card and instead of charging me for SMS, remove some of those points. Also, by combining your mobile to your store card just think of the data mining possibilities. You wouldn't have to tell them when you go shopping they have that data. Also, what better direct marketing would you like? Sainsburys have about ten years data on me, they have a pretty good idea what I buy and when and could send me special offers just for me, with some kind of code that a cashier could enter.

We'll see what happens. It's an odd combination of convenience and scariness.

Blyk - Free calls for adverts

Something came to my attention earlier this week, a new virtual cell-co, Blyk. Blyk's angle here is that it's giving away over 200 free SMS and 47 minutes of free phone calls. All this is in exchange for being advertisted at.

There seems to be two schools of thought about advertising, the Cluetrainthought (number 74) against the Google/Facebook "look at us we're made of millions yet we don't take a penny" thought. Blyk seems to be taking the second side.

Get them while they're young!

Let's consider for a while, as the Guardian points out, teenagers are going to love this, free stuff rocks! But the Register points out a more serious side with the consequences.

Blyk will not only have your profile data for getting the sim (age and sex etc), but by using the handset it will also have call and location data about the caller as well. This data is invaluable, your location (although generally restricted by hundreads of meters at best through Cell Mast postitioning) can be used for targeted advertising and can also use call and SMS history to target ads as well. Will they go as far as reading your texts for key words?

People expect stuff for free now! Most are willing to be advertised at for free stuff, but some are still cautious about this.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this all yet. Anyway, check them out and Blyk in the news:

http://about.blyk.com/home/
http://www.blyk.co.uk/
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2006/gb20061103_894708.htm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/blyk-launches-ad-based-mobile-network/

apps of the day

There seem to be so many cool little apps appearing on the web. I found Xpenser through an article on Lifehacker.com (http://lifehacker.com/software/personal-finance/track-your-purchases-as-they-happen-at-xpenser-309209.php) . It's real simple tool where you can post your current expenses to keep track of them via SMS, IM or email. You can then get some simple reports from those to help with your personal finances.

Sweet.

Jott looks like another interesting place, doing voice transcripts from voice mails and putting those as feeds on their site. Only available to US residents at the moment, which is a shame as I'd really like to try it out.