Drinks and Decor: Turning Booze into Art

By Nina Elder

What’s Happening

• BevShots transform drops of cocktails, beer, and wine into pieces of contemporary art.

• To make the boozy graphics, beverages are first crystallized on a lab slide. The slide is put under a microscope, infused with polarized light, and then photographed. The resulting images have a colorful, kaleidoscope look.

• Consumers can choose from nearly 30 different beverage-tinged pieces, including Dry Martini, German Pilsner, and Champagne.

What This Means to Business

• If food is art, why shouldn’t delicious things inspire decorative items? And art that feels personalized—or at least expresses unique aspects of the owner’s identity—clicks with consumers.

• Consumers have a very personal connection to their favorite food—and drinks. Why not extend that passion to areas other than the kitchen?

Climate Changing Rooms

By Nissa Hanna

What’s Happening

• Canadian customers at Mark’s Edmonton, Canada, store don’t have to wonder how well the winter wear holds up in cold climates. The retailer has created a custom walk-in freezer so shoppers can test drive jackets, hats, gloves, and long underwear.

• Mark’s climate changing room is set to a frosty –5 degrees, but brave souls can turn it down to an unthinkably cold –40 degrees.

• If that’s not convincing enough, the room also has fans that kick in the wind-chill factor.

• The Edmonton store is a testing ground for the retailer, who might roll the chilly changing room concept out to its other stores.

What This Means to Business

• How well does outerwear hold up to the elements? Consumers don’t want to find out the answer is “not very well” while on a secluded camping trip or in the middle of a snow storm. A retailer that provides realistic testing conditions establishes itself as a place where consumers can feel confident about the durability, quality, and integrity of their purchases.

Health Care Gift Cards

By Stefania Revelli

What’s Happening

• For BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, the line between health care and retail continues to get fuzzier; this fall, the company rolled out health care gift cards.

• Two different types of gift cards are available and can be picked up in Winn Dixie or CVS pharmacy stores. The $59 Blue Health Care card covers up to 10 weeks of limited health insurance and can be used towards the purchase of plans for routine and preventive medical care (including doctor, dentist, pharmacy, or lab work).

• The Family Blue Discount card ($19) gives users significant discounts on dental (10–50 percent), prescription (20 percent), and vision services (10–60 percent) for up to three months.

What This Means to Business

• These days even those who have insurance could use more help in the health department. Innovative signs that affordability and health care can coexist provides peace of mind when times are tough.

• A company that seemingly makes health care as easy, accessible, and affordable to pick up as laundry detergent is a health hero for consumers.

A Documentary Success

By Katie Elfering

What’s Happening

• The recipe for a perfect zombie movie: blood, guts, the undead . . . and a 12-year-old girl? That’s the premise of Zombie Girl, an award-winning documentary that follows tween filmmaker Emily Hagins as she writes and films a feature-length zombie flick.

• Zombie Girl showcases two years of successes and challenges that Emily faces while trying to film her project (budget issues, mom as film crew), as well as the challenges of coming of age (being a tween girl).

• Hagins is no novice to movie-making. A regular on the local indie cinema scene in her hometown of Austin, Texas, she’s also BFF with Harry Knowles of the Ain’t It Cool News Web site. Knowles even helped Hagins snag an internship on an indie horror production—at the ripe old age of 10.

What This Means to Business

• Fashion bloggers, musicians, and filmmakers: Gen We is already shaping up to be one of the most creative, productive, and passionate generations yet. Don’t be surprised to see continued creativity and an expanding entrepreneurial spirit coming from these young consumers as they continue to receive plenty of encouragement to create.

Exploding Overdraft Fees

By Hans Eisenbeis

What’s Happening

• Americans are shifting their rage from Wall Street and the credit card industry to their own banks. Why? Because in an effort to protect their margins, U.S. banks and credit unions have boosted overdraft fees a brutal 35 percent since 2007.

• An October 2009 study by the Center for Responsible Lending found that financial institutions brought in $24 billion in overdraft fees in 2008, a huge source of revenue that effectively profits from consumer pain.

• Banks argue that overdraft services prevent customers from being denied at the cash register when they don’t have enough funds to cover a purchase. But consumer advocates say the poor and the young pay a disproportionate amount of overdrafts, and banks should be required to get consumer approval for the practice.

What This Means to Business

• A major fight is brewing, and consumers have the momentum due to big wins such as the Credit CARD Act of 2009. Congress may well create new regulations to limit overdraft practices.

• The largest U.S. banks are proactively revising their overdraft policies and practices to be more consumer friendly. But a sea change is coming, and banks need to recast themselves as truly looking after the interests of their customers.