How Advertising Works in Chippenham #29


  1. Build your supermarket on one of the town's most popular estates
  2. Make sure there's a large, warm welcoming area to get shoppers in from the cold
  3. Add several features designed to help them spend more money
  4. Wait for a blogger with a camera to wonder since when have coins not been cash?
  5. Et voila!
I know I'm being a little unfair as these are a feature of many a supermarket outside of Chippenham, but it was only when I was in my local one that the penny (literally!) dropped ;)

Comments

  1. Lea's Menagerie18 January 2012 at 13:08

    How right you are!
    These machines are in our supermarkets here, too. And they keep a percentage of your money as a service fee for counting it for you! How ridiculous!
    Lea
    Mississippi, USA

    ReplyDelete
  2. Emma18 January 2012 at 14:40

    If you have a pocketful of small change, a better option is to go through one of the self-service tills - they take all your change without complaining, and don't take a service charge, and you can pay the balance however you like.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The bike shed18 January 2012 at 20:01

    Very good - hadn't spotted that one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous18 January 2012 at 20:14

    Hi,

    Haha, that's amazing! Who'd have thought coins=cash???!!

    The world is a strange place.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Esther Montgomery19 January 2012 at 19:19

    Glad I read Emma's comment. An accumulation of small change soon results in a hoard difficult to use in shops. Braving the self-check out is a good answer.

    VP - why have you changed your comment method? May I vote against it please?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dobby19 January 2012 at 20:55

    There is one of these in a supermarket where I used to live. Never used it as any change I had went into car parking machines!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Janet20 January 2012 at 09:05

    I've seen these machines and thought "Why would you?". I'm one of these people that count out their pennies...I'm also a bit of a luddite when it comes to self service tills.

    ReplyDelete
  8. VP19 February 2012 at 09:03

    Hi - thanks for your comments :)

    Emma - that's a #toptip :)

    Esther - it looks like Blogger have made some changes to leaving comments :( What are the problems with this option you don't like? It'll help me explore which option now looks best going forward.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Esther Montgomery19 February 2012 at 09:50

    Oh good. No threads. (Today?)

    The reason I don't like them is this - that when bloggers reply to un-threaded comments, they begin with the name of the person they are addressing. When they reply to threaded ones, they don't so, when replies are forwarded into my email box, I have no idea who is being replied to. There are times when some posts, on some blogs, get a massive number of comments - so many there comes a point when, even if they are interesting, I stop reading them all. When that happens, I search my mail for 'Esther', or the name of my blog so I can, at least read what the blogger has said specifically to me.

    Another reason is that rather than enhancing 'conversations' they fragment them. The blogger relates separately to each reader separately so they need have nothing to do with each other or even read what the others are saying. Sometimes, commenters say something very interesting but, as we have no idea which replies are addressed to whom it's impossible to keep track or make sense.

    This may not matter if all people are saying is 'pretty picture' but Veg Plotting isn't that kind of blog. You actually invite people to 'start a conversation'. Maybe it's rare that a real 'conversation' starts but there are interactions where you need to know both sides of it to gain from it.

    As for me . . . I find it so completely pointless reading replies to threads, I've stopped getting them sent to my inbox. (With occasional exceptions.)

    And as for the embedded box (which you have here) - I'm not very struck on that either because the word verification comes after the 'publish' button has been pressed. Depending on the layout of the blog, it's easy to press 'publish' and leave without realising WV was necessary. You have to remember - and scroll down to do it or your comment is lost. Then you have to check you did it right - and it all becomes a pain.

    On the other hand, this system does have the advantage that you can subscribe to comments after you've left a comment so you don't have to silt up your inbox further by receiving a copy of what you know you've said!

    There's also something very odd which is happening on some blogs now, where you have to move the slider down to get to the WV - another pain, another dicincentive to leave comments, another point at which a comment could be lost.

    On your blog, a slider has appeared under the comment box so, if I expand the box size to make it easier to write (ha!) the words disappear and you have to slide backwards and forwards to see what you are writing. Three sliders round one comment box is a bit extreme!

    Er . . . you did ask.

    (And I knew - because you said 'Eshter'!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Esther Montgomery19 February 2012 at 09:51

    p.s. I had to slide to find the WV . . . and, when I found it (the new two part one) it said nolice HEMMING. I wondered who hemming is but am glad s/he's got no lice!

    ReplyDelete
  11. VP19 February 2012 at 10:26

    Hi Esther - no threads because I'm awfully behind in replying to everyone's comments :(

    That's all very useful stuff to know. I'd had problems with comments disappearing on other blogs and I think it was because the slider didn't appear. It looks like Blogger have been making all kinds of changes to the way comments work, probably because spam seems to be getting through much more frequently despite the various nets they've put in place to capture it.

    However, I can't find any announcement by them anywhere on what they've been doing, apart from the threaded comment announcement. The recent introduction of the 2 word captcha system is particularly annoying. I've found it v trying on other blogs in the past and it's proving to be almost impossible to leave a comment 1st time round now they've introduced it. It might stop the robots, but I expect it'll also deter most commenters and therefore the conversations that you and I like to encourage.

    It's so bad I'm considering moving to Comment Approval, which I also don't like because it stops the conversation if I'm not around to release people's comments and commenters can't see straight away if their comment is OK :(

    It's all a bit of a nightmare at the moment especially as I don't have the time to think things through nor sort it out properly, which I really want to do :( :( :(

    It's nice to have some time this morning to talk to you though :)

    BTW if a conversation does develop AND if I stick with the new threaded comments option, I'm intending to stick with the old method of doing an unthreaded comment for these and mentioning people by name :)

    ReplyDelete

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