Tag Archives: Fun

Making People Dance Instead of Jaywalk

Making People Dance Instead of JaywalkI love anything that is fun and investigates human psychology, especially crowd psychology, and the investigation of how you can use fun to potentially influence human behavior for social good (i.e. the piano stairs example I’ve shared before).

Nobody likes to wait at pedestrian crossings. Traffic lights can be dangerous for impatient pedestrians trying to save a few seconds to cross the street (and willing to risk their lives in the process).

The folks at Smart created The Dancing Traffic Light, an experiential marketing concept providing a fun and safe way to keep people from venturing too early into the street. They started by placing a dance room on a square in Lisbon, Portugal and invited random pedestrians to go into the box and dance. Their movements were then displayed on a few traffic lights in real time. This resulted in 81% more people stopping and waiting at those red lights.

It’s a genius marketing gimmick because it reinforces the brand value of fun by making people dance in a box that looks, imagine that, a bit like a smart car.

The question brought up by this example of a marketing campaign that claims that fun can be used to achieve social good, is that it claims a benefit, that without an extended test could be attributed to novelty…

Does the benefit hold up over time?

Or does it stop being fun and impactful after people have seen it once or twice or the live video component goes away and it becomes a recording? Do people then start jaywalking again at the normal rate?

What do you think?


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Amazon Makes Copy and Paste Fun

Amazon Makes Copy and Paste Fun

When companies start from the premise that innovation is all about value, it is amazing just how many innovations – big and small – that they can achieve.

So how do you make something as dull as giving someone a gift card, especially an online gift card where you’re buying a string of numbers and letters for the recipient to copy and paste the code into their Amazon account, interesting?

Well, Amazon has teamed with Jib Jab to transform this pretty boring but useful process into a valuable and fun one for both you the buyer and the recipient of your Amazon gift card by allowing you to make a fun, customized video card to send along with the gift card, that makes you the star.

Yes, it is a small thing, but when you put the focus of all of your employees on creating value, improving value access, and doing good value translation in every element of your business, just think how much innovation you can create.

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – June 1, 2012


“All our dreams can come true if we have the desire to pursue them.”

– Walt Disney


“The product or service are an expression of the customer insights, and it is the useful life of the insights that we are concerned with, not the useful life of the product or service (a post-purchase concept). When the insights reach their sell by date, sales will begin to tail off, and you better have another product or service ready to replace this one (based on fresh insights).”

– Braden Kelley


“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”

– Katharine Hepburn


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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Innovating for Fun and Social Good

I came across this a while back on sitsite.com’s blog, use it in some of my innovation speaker engagements, and had to share it. After all, we could all use a little more fun in our lives, and if some social good can be achieved in the process, all the better!

It is from a Swedish site advertising a contest that was designed to award a 2,500 Euro prize for the idea that best exemplifies the premise that:

“something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

To see more examples or to enter the contest, please visit The Fun Theory site. The campaign and competition are sponsored by Volkswagen – Smart move!

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Nine Innovation Roles Card Deck Coming Soon

People have been asking me to do more with The Nine Innovation Roles since I started speaking about them at conferences and events around the world, and now I am finally doing something to answer these requests.

I am pleased to announce a crowdfunding project on Indiegogo to fund the creation of an interactive card game focused on The Nine Innovation Roles – after finding out innovation is not allowed on Kickstarter.

At the same time there is a $500 design contest underway on Crowdspring to create the designs for the card deck – and possibly posters too!

Nine Innovation Roles Crowdspring Project

I am trying to raise $2,500 on Indiegogo to cover the design contest prize and fees, and the initial printing costs for 1,000 Nine Innovation Roles Card Decks.

You can show your support for this project by pledging any amount or by picking any of the great perks available for as little as $15.

If you are an innovation product seller or service provider, for $300 you can reserve one side of a card in the deck to be your very own in every pack sold (starting with an initial print run of 1,000 card decks), or for $500 you can have a whole card to yourself (FRONT and BACK).

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