It’s never easy gathering honest feedback from consumers about brands and advertising, particularly in artificial settings such as the market research lab. Where Chicago-based Lab42 has turned to social networks as a more natural place to reach consumers, UK-based Hall & Partners have begun offering a service from within a branded taxi cab.
Rather than trying to gauge popular opinions in the artificial lab setting or awkward on-the-street interview, London market research firm Hall & Partners now offers its clients an alternative. Specifically, it has created a dedicated, branded taxi cab — complete with its own Facebook page — that brands can use to collect feedback while providing a valuable service to consumers. Retail brands, for instance, can hire the Hall & Partners cab to shuttle shoppers home from the mall in comfort, in exchange for their thoughts about the shopping experience. Others can simply tour the streets for a day and provide rides in exchange for passengers’ views about a particular topic. One of Hall & Partners professional researchers is typically part of the package, which can include product and taste tests as well.
Part brand butler, part tryvertising campaign and part market research tool, Hall & Partners’ taxi offers clients a compelling new way to get closer to customers while helping them out — not to mention serving as a highly visible mobile billboard for H&P itself. Researchers around the world: be inspired!
Website: www.hall-and-partners.com
Contact: www.hall-and-partners.com
Spotted by: Fadila Merizak
Related Ideas:
Sending regular communications to parents and teachers can be a tricky and costly business, even more so in developing countries where email access may be limited. In Kenya, however, a software development start up Tusqee offer a simple solution with SchoolSMS, a system that enables schools to send bulk messages via text.
The SchoolSMS software is free to download and install. After installing and registering the software, schools are assigned five free SMS credits in order to test the software, and can buy credits in bulk afterwards. Groups of contacts can be created by manually entering names and phone numbers, or by importing lists from MS Outlook and Excel, and schools are free to create as many groups as they wish. The software allows for customization — for example, schools can populate the “from” field with their name — and once set up, schools can keep parents informed of the latest school news and invite them to meetings via text. A similar product from Tusqee, SchoolSMS Premium, is aimed at parents and enables them to receive exam results for their children, view fee statements from the school and subscribe to the school’s newsletter. The software supports both Swahili and English.
Text messaging remains a cheap, simple and reliable communication channel. Inspiration here for other organizations that need to connect with a mass audience without access to the internet?
Website: www.tusqee.com
Contact: info@tusqee.com
Spotted by: Katharina Kieck
Related Ideas:
Five Best Personal Landing Pages
Not everyone has the time or inclination to build and maintain a full-fledged web site. If you're just looking for a simple way to unify all your online profiles, these personal landing pages are a perfect fit.
Photo by datarec.
Earlier this week, we asked you to share your favorite personal landing page. A personal landing page is a small-scale web site that directs visitors towards your other profiles on the web, a central page you can direct people to, instead of writing and linking a laundry list of your online presences—your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and other profiles.
If you're looking to set up a personal landing page to unify your online presence without the work of setting up and maintaining your own web site, the following services can help. Read on to see the most popular personal landing pages.
Note: For the screenshots below, we took snapshots of real profiles from all of the services, as discovered by Google searches or provided as examples on the main site of each service. Since the services are customizable, don't assume that all personal landing pages from that particular service look exactly like the sample screenshot. Visit the service web site for more information and to see how you can customize your own site.
Unhub (Free)
The Unhub service isn't as much a personal landing page as a personal landing bar. When you give people your Unhub profile URL, what they see is an Unhub bar across the top of the browser pane and your featured site below it. Unlike most personal landing page services which limit you to well known social networks and services, Unhub lets you link to anything you want. If you want the bar to have your Amazon wish list, your YouTube profile, a link to your Wikipedia page, and then links to a couple virtual portfolios of various work you've done, you can do that. You select the site Unhub will bring the user's focus to and which sites will be displayed across the Unhub bar. Unhub includes a URL shortening tool and site analytics to help you see which links get clicked the most and which profiles interest your visitors. You always have to point Unhub at something, even if it's just your Facebook profile page. If you're looking for a service that serves as a one-stop information board for your visitors, you might consider some of the other personal landing pages in this week's Hive Five.
Card.ly (Free)
Card.ly, as the name would imply, is a business-card-styled personal landing page. You can tweak your Card.ly profile with all sorts of customizations, scaling it from a simple set of social network icons people can click to a full-fledged mini-portal, with a profile, personal quotes, and additional information about you. Card.ly has a demo account, available here, where you can play around with the themes and settings to get a feel for the service before you sign up.
Flavors.me (Free)
Flavors.me is a personal landing page that emphasizes style and presentation over an abundance of widgets. The Flavors.me layout is designed to showcase a photograph or piece of artwork with a small bio and a set of links layered over it. Although the design is simple, the creative variations user come up with are quite interesting. You can browse through a directory of profiles here to get ideas. Simple and punchy design aside, Flavors.me sports a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that makes it quick to get a site up and running. You can check out our review of Flavors.me here.
Chi.mp (Free)
Compared to other contenders in this week's Hive Five, Chi.mp takes customization to another level. Instead of merely allowing you to swap out pictures or select which links you want to include, Chi.mp lets you build multiple profiles and highlight what's important to you. You can make a professional profile to share with colleagues, a personal profile to share with friends, and as many variations as you need for different situations or projects. In addition, you can emphasize some of the content you share over other content. Say you want to emphasize, for example, your Twitter feed over other shared content like your Flickr photos, Chi.mp lets you promote the Twitter feed to appear more prominently.
ClaimID (Free)
ClaimID has the least splashy personal landing page offering in this week's Hive Five. The emphasis at Claim ID isn't about expressing your artistic side, or wildly differentiating yourself from the crowd, but instead on showcasing the services that are important to you. Customization is limited, but it's easy enough to create a long list of all the services and web sites you want to share. ClaimID is tied into the OpenID service, so if it's important to you to show people that you've actually been verified as the person you're claiming to be, and that your links actually point to the real profiles of John Q. Smith, then you may want to consider ClaimID's personal landing page, despite the lack of eye candy.Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal landing page it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:
Which Personal Landing Page Is Best?survey software
Have a favorite personal landing page that wasn't featured? Let's hear about it in the comments. Have a tip or trick for making the most of a personal landing page? We want to hear about that too. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with Hive Five in the subject line.
Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.
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Five Best Personal Landing Pages
Earlier this week, we asked you to share your favorite personal landing page. A personal landing page is a small-scale web site that directs visitors towards your other profiles on the web, a central page you can direct people to, instead of writing and linking a laundry list of your online presences—your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and other profiles.
If you're looking to set up a personal landing page to unify your online presence without the work of setting up and maintaining your own web site, the following services can help. Read on to see the most popular personal landing pages.
Note: For the screenshots below, we took snapshots of real profiles from all of the services, as discovered by Google searches or provided as examples on the main site of each service. Since the services are customizable, don't assume that all personal landing pages from that particular service look exactly like the sample screenshot. Visit the service web site for more information and to see how you can customize your own site.
The Unhub service isn't as much a personal landing page as a personal landing bar. When you give people your Unhub profile URL, what they see is an Unhub bar across the top of the browser pane and your featured site below it. Unlike most personal landing page services which limit you to well known social networks and services, Unhub lets you link to anything you want. If you want the bar to have your Amazon wish list, your YouTube profile, a link to your Wikipedia page, and then links to a couple virtual portfolios of various work you've done, you can do that. You select the site Unhub will bring the user's focus to and which sites will be displayed across the Unhub bar. Unhub includes a URL shortening tool and site analytics to help you see which links get clicked the most and which profiles interest your visitors. You always have to point Unhub at something, even if it's just your Facebook profile page. If you're looking for a service that serves as a one-stop information board for your visitors, you might consider some of the other personal landing pages in this week's Hive Five.
Card.ly, as the name would imply, is a business-card-styled personal landing page. You can tweak your Card.ly profile with all sorts of customizations, scaling it from a simple set of social network icons people can click to a full-fledged mini-portal, with a profile, personal quotes, and additional information about you. Card.ly has a demo account, available here, where you can play around with the themes and settings to get a feel for the service before you sign up.
Flavors.me is a personal landing page that emphasizes style and presentation over an abundance of widgets. The Flavors.me layout is designed to showcase a photograph or piece of artwork with a small bio and a set of links layered over it. Although the design is simple, the creative variations user come up with are quite interesting. You can browse through a directory of profiles here to get ideas. Simple and punchy design aside, Flavors.me sports a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that makes it quick to get a site up and running. You can check out our review of Flavors.me here.
Compared to other contenders in this week's Hive Five, Chi.mp takes customization to another level. Instead of merely allowing you to swap out pictures or select which links you want to include, Chi.mp lets you build multiple profiles and highlight what's important to you. You can make a professional profile to share with colleagues, a personal profile to share with friends, and as many variations as you need for different situations or projects. In addition, you can emphasize some of the content you share over other content. Say you want to emphasize, for example, your Twitter feed over other shared content like your Flickr photos, Chi.mp lets you promote the Twitter feed to appear more prominently.
Five Best Personal Landing Pages
Earlier this week, we asked you to share your favorite personal landing page. A personal landing page is a small-scale web site that directs visitors towards your other profiles on the web, a central page you can direct people to, instead of writing and linking a laundry 
list of your online presences—your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and other profiles.
If you're looking to set up a personal landing page to unify your online presence without the work of setting up and maintaining your own web site, the following services can help. Read on to see the most popular personal landing pages.
Note: For the screenshots below, we took snapshots of real profiles from all of the services, as discovered by Google searches or provided as examples on the main site of each service. Since the services are customizable, don't assume that all personal landing pages from that particular service look exactly like the sample screenshot. Visit the service web site for more information and to see how you can customize your own site.
The Unhub service isn't as much a personal landing page as a personal landing bar. When you give people your Unhub profile URL, what they see is an Unhub bar across the top of the browser pane and your featured site below it. Unlike most personal landing page services which limit you to well known social networks and services, Unhub lets you link to anything you want. If you want the bar to have your Amazon wish list, your YouTube profile, a link to your Wikipedia page, and then links to a couple virtual portfolios of various work you've done, you can do that. You select the site Unhub will bring the user's focus to and which sites will be displayed across the Unhub bar. Unhub includes a URL shortening tool and site analytics to help you see which links get clicked the most and which profiles interest your visitors. You always have to point Unhub at something, even if it's just your Facebook profile page. If you're looking for a service that serves as a one-stop information board for your visitors, you might consider some of the other personal landing pages in this week's Hive Five.
Card.ly, as the name would imply, is a business-card-styled personal landing page. You can tweak your Card.ly profile with all sorts of customizations, scaling it from a simple set of social network icons people can click to a full-fledged mini-portal, with a profile, personal quotes, and additional information about you. Card.ly has a demo account, available here, where you can play around with the themes and settings to get a feel for the service before you sign up.
Flavors.me is a personal landing page that emphasizes style and presentation over an abundance of widgets. The Flavors.me layout is designed to showcase a photograph or piece of artwork with a small bio and a set of links layered over it. Although the design is simple, the creative variations user come up with are quite interesting. You can browse through a directory of profiles here to get ideas. Simple and punchy design aside, Flavors.me sports a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that makes it quick to get a site up and running. You can check out our review of Flavors.me here.
Compared to other contenders in this week's Hive Five, Chi.mp takes customization to another level. Instead of merely allowing you to swap out pictures or select which links you want to include, Chi.mp lets you build multiple profiles and highlight what's important to you. You can make a professional profile to share with colleagues, a personal profile to share with friends, and as many variations as you need for different situations or projects. In addition, you can emphasize some of the content you share over other content. Say you want to emphasize, for example, your Twitter feed over other shared content like your Flickr photos, Chi.mp lets you promote the Twitter feed to appear more prominently.
Five Best Personal Landing Pages
Earlier this week, we asked you to share your favorite personal landing page. A personal landing page is a small-scale web site that directs visitors towards your other profiles on the web, a central page you can direct people to, instead of writing and linking a laundry list of your online presences—your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and other profiles.
If you're looking to set up a personal landing page to unify your online presence without the work of setting up and maintaining your own web site, the following services can help. Read on to see the most popular personal landing pages.
Note: For the screenshots below, we took snapshots of real profiles from all of the services, as discovered by Google searches or provided as examples on the main site of each service. Since the services are customizable, don't assume that all personal landing pages from that particular service look exactly like the sample screenshot. Visit the service web site for more information and to see how you can customize your own site.
The Unhub service isn't as much a personal landing page as a personal landing bar. When you give people your Unhub profile URL, what they see is an Unhub bar across the top of the browser pane and your featured site below it. Unlike most personal landing page services which limit you to well known social networks and services, Unhub lets you link to anything you want. If you want the bar to have your Amazon wish list, your YouTube profile, a link to your Wikipedia page, and then links to a couple virtual portfolios of various work you've done, you can do that. You select the site Unhub will bring the user's focus to and which sites will be displayed across the Unhub bar. Unhub includes a URL shortening tool and site analytics to help you see which links get clicked the most and which profiles interest your visitors. You always have to point Unhub at something, even if it's just your Facebook profile page. If you're looking for a service that serves as a one-stop information board for your visitors, you might consider some of the other personal landing pages in this week's Hive Five.
Card.ly, as the name would imply, is a business-card-styled personal landing page. You can tweak your Card.ly profile with all sorts of customizations, scaling it from a simple set of social network icons people can click to a full-fledged mini-portal, with a profile, personal quotes, and additional information about you. Card.ly has a demo account, available here, where you can play around with the themes and settings to get a feel for the service before you sign up.
Flavors.me is a personal landing page that emphasizes style and presentation over an abundance of widgets. The Flavors.me layout is designed to showcase a photograph or piece of artwork with a small bio and a set of links layered over it. Although the design is simple, the creative variations user come up with are quite interesting. You can browse through a directory of profiles here to get ideas. Simple and punchy design aside, Flavors.me sports a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that makes it quick to get a site up and running. You can check out our review of Flavors.me here.
Compared to other contenders in this week's Hive Five, Chi.mp takes customization to another level. Instead of merely allowing you to swap out pictures or select which links you want to include, Chi.mp lets you build multiple profiles and highlight what's important to you. You can make a professional profile to share with colleagues, a personal profile to share with friends, and as many variations as you need for different situations or projects. In addition, you can emphasize some of the content you share over other content. Say you want to emphasize, for example, your Twitter feed over other shared content like your Flickr photos, Chi.mp lets you promote the Twitter feed to appear more prominently.
