Headed back home from Heathrow Airport after a lovely vacation, I stopped at the Pret A Manger for a quick pre-flight bite.

When I got to the cash register, I noticed this awesome sticker — concise, honest, and, best of all, empathetic.

VAT NIGHTMARE

We’re legally required to add on
VAT when you eat in. Nightmare.

They’re legally required to charge VAT (value added tax), but they aren’t required to be dicks about it. Yet most merchants are. The staff feels that it’s out of their control and they’re sick of getting blamed, so they shrug their shoulders and keep it quiet, hoping you won’t notice.

I admire Pret for taking a different route: being upfront, noting it prominently, and identifying with the customer. Now that they’ve set my expectations and repudiate the blame, my distaste in paying it doesn’t negatively effect their brand. In fact, I like them even more now. It’s kind of genius.

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I’ve been consulting for Happy Cog for a year and a half, but when this arrived in my inbox yesterday, I became a true Happy Cogger.

Many thanks to Kevin Cornell for creating it. Everyone at Happy Cog has one of these cuties, and now I do, too.

So what do you think…does it look like me?

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Talk about being on brand. The Peabody Hotel never misses a beat when it comes to their world-renowned ducks.

This is the sign they put in front of the center elevator just before the March of the Ducks. It’s so freakin’ cute and something you’d never see anywhere else that I just had to share.

Learn more about the Peabody Ducks. And remember, it’s the details that count.

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When you hit Save Draft and you get this message:

WordPress Failure Notice: Your attempt to edit this post has failed. Please try again.

Luckily for me, when I hit the Back button I discovered that WordPress had auto-saved the draft and none of my edits were lost.

Still, perhaps they should consider using a slightly less severe tone. Failure Notice is a bit harsh, don’t you think? Doesn’t seem to fit with the WordPress brand, and it certainly didn’t make me feel very good!

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I don’t want to beat a dead horse here. We all know that Tropicana redesigned their cartons and there was a major backlash from consumers.

In the end it was pulled from the shelves, but not before Matt Knell was able to snap this unbelievable pic:

Matt showed me this photo on his iPhone recently and said, “Tell me how many different cartons are in this grocery display?”

“Two,” I said confidently. “Three shelves of the new design and one lowly carton of the old design.”

“Nope. There are FIVE.”

What?! I couldn’t see it. Then Matt pointed out each of the distinct variations, which are indicated only by the color of stripe at the top of the carton above the pouring spout.

High Pulp orange juice with calcium and vitamin D (marked with a magenta stripe and blue line):

Pulp Free orange juice for Healthy Kids (marked with an orange stripe and orange line):

One lone carton of Pulp Free orange juice for Healthy Kids in the old design:

Pulp Free orange juice (marked with just an orange stripe):

Some Pulp orange juice (marked with a green stripe):

I was amazed at how subtle the differences were. Hardly any clear cues to a customer who’s trying to get in and out of the grocery store as quickly as possible. Ultimately the carton redesigns severely hurt Tropicana’s brand recognition and led to diminished sales. Hopefully the lesson learned here is to stay true to timeless symbols — particularly with mass market products that already have such dominant market share.

Some great analysis on the Tropicana redesign:
Eight Major Failures by Matt Everson
Packaging: Lessons from Tropicana’s Fruitless Design by Jennifer Gidman

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