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It's Easy Getting Objects Carried

Like many shops in Delhi the Rama Color photo studio in Bengali Market uses advertising handouts to get their logo carried and displayed by their customers. One side of the advertisement depicts a god and the other side a calendar. During wallet mapping studies I'm often surprised at the ease by which people accept objects which are then carried, at least until the next time the wallet is cleared out. One of the most prevalent of these objects in modern urban centers is the buy-10-get-one-free coffee 'loyalty' card, but in India if the religious depiction doesn't grab a person's attention then the calendar will. It's not even the functionality that draws people to take the object, but the perceived functionality - the fact that it might be useful and that it's, well, free.

At what point is it economically feasible for stores to give away, by today's standards, richer more complex objects? Electronic flyers for example. To be picked up in the first place one thing will remain the same - they object will have a perceived functionality. What will be different is that they can act independently - designed to take advantage of the proximity of being placed in someone's purse, pocket, handbag or wallet to collect and report proximity data. To some people the physical space of your wallet will be just another real-time commercial battleground. Knowing what you have in there and how frequently you use is valuable data - disabling the opponent in whatever way will be a bonus. Its tempting to use the word Trojan or parasite, but by being self-sustaining and self-maintaining a self-reporting free-bee is more accurate.

And in a world where this is widespread how will this affect what we decide to pick up?

Writing from Delhi, Outskirts of | April 9, 2006 | Permalink