“Come on baby, light my Fire!”
By Vending Pixie
(They seek her here, they seek her there, but Vending Pixie is everywhere…)
31st October, re-posted PV 6 Nov.
Hallo-ween to all my loyal followers.
To my good friends on the Eastern Seaboard, I hope that the impacts of Hurricane Sandy are short-lived. A real reminder that nature usually has the last word… Pixie wishes you a speedy return to normality.
Vending Paris
Last week was all about Vending Paris. Aside from a distinct lack of air conditioning on the first couple of days, the show was enjoyable, reasonably busy and good for spotting what’s happening in vending. Slick, well organised and friendly. NAVSA are to be complimented on a job well done.
Delightfully, Crema was well in evidence on many of the stands so espresso top-ups were assured! The trend for health and wellbeing (santé) being noticeable; driven by NAVSA members working closely with the French Ministry of Health – bravo. However, if I’m brutally honest, my fires weren’t really lit by anything on offer. Sure, there were hints of vending mimicking current technology trends; screens, tablets, multiple payment formats… the usual suspects! Oh and lest we forget the inevitable popcorn, pizza and pulpe d’orange!
Interconnectivity of consumers and machines.
Perhaps it’s beyond reasonable to expect a mature industry such as vending to be anything other than followers in generating consumer wow, but your Pixie lives in hope! Slowly but surely, we are embracing social, digital and mobile technologies, marrying interconnectivity of consumers and machines. Perhaps it’s tortoise and hare?
Many of you reading will be crying out loud – what does this Pixie know… well, clearly, if we were telling our stories loud, live and dangerous, I would know a lot more than I saw last week in Paris! My point? Engaging consumers, customers, staff is all about story telling… you can big it up, call it promotion or marketing, that’s fine with me; but let’s shout from the rooftops. Write to me as “outraged of Macclesfield, Mumbai or Milan” and put me back on the road to redemption. Come on babies, light my fire…
Take the Pixie challenge!
Yours in vending
Pixie
(PS: Planet Vending will bring you every issue of Pixie’s thought-provoking blog, but there’s nothing to stop you from going to the source yourself: the Vending Pixie blog site. Ed.)
Blog number 2 in Pixie’s series, ‘Talking Turkey’, is now on Planet Vending.
