Benjamin Ellis

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Matterbox

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It’s nice to get a surprise, and it is also nice to get something you’ve been waiting for. The Matter Box that arrived through the post yesterday was a bit of both. I got an email saying it would be with me, then one saying it would be delayed.

Oh the suspense! Well managed communications though – a general note: if you are going to be late with something, let people know. Much better than letting people down. Well done Matter.

 

The general idea behind Matter Box is best explained by Matter themselves:

Matter is a new and innovative way for companies to talk to people by giving you real, physical stuff – things to hold in your hands, keep in your drawer, or give to your friends.

In a digital age, we want to bring companies and people together around real, physical things

I like the sentiment. As much as I am a massive on-line advocate, real physical stuff trumps the on-line world anytime. 

It isn’t easy to show in a picture, so let me list what was in the box:

  • Cadbury Cranberry & Granola Bar
  • BBC Audio Comedy sampler
  • Original Source Orange Oil & Ginger hair and body wash
  • LOVEFiLM DVD cleaning cloth and a month’s movies
  • O2 sim card pack
  • Pimm’s, Baileys, Bell’s & Gordon’s winter drinks pack - recipes and ‘roaring fire’ DVD
  • Sampler of ‘Let Battle Commence’ by Conn Iggulden / Harper Collins.
The Cadbuy Cranberry and Granola bar was a timely peace offering for someone – and very nice too. I tried to dig around on the Cadbury (.co.uk) site to see what other things they made that I’d not heard about before. Turned out to be harder than I thought. The a glass and a half full productions site actually had more info, but I had to wade through megabytes of flash games just to get to basic product information. Grrr…
The Original Source stuff smells amazing. I like the website too – it is snazzy. However, it still wanted me to play a game – I just wanted to find out if they did any tea tree products! I’ll have to look through the shelves next time I am in a shop. Anyway, the orange and ginger smells absolutely wonderful and doesn’t seem to have set off any allergic reactions.
I picked out those two products as I’ll come back to the others (and a couple are probably something for my work blog), I also picked them because they are good examples of how this sort of marketing can be very effective. A piece of paper wouldn’t have got me to try the products, or drawn a mention. They are something you really have to experience…

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Posted in Gadgets 1 year, 2 months ago at 2:16 pm.

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One Reply

  1. Warren @ Matter Dec 8th 2008

    Hi,

    Thanks for the mention. Glad you seem to have enjoyed your Matterbox. Its really important you tell us what you think we could do/include next time which we didn’t this time and vice-versa. Please log into the Matterbox websote if you get a chance and leave us some feedback.

    Anyway, look forward to hearing what you have to say.

    Thanks again,
    Warren @ Matter


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