Ice Cream, Dry Ice, and Customer/Product Interaction

Today at work, one of our vendors sent us a ton of ice cream as a nice gesture. It was a sort of “Congratulations, you’re an official company” kind of thing. Which was very nice of them.

However, in addition to the ice cream was the fact that it got shipped with dry ice. Next thing you know, a ton of folks were in the kitchen, doing little ice+water experiments, walking around with foaming cups of dry ice, heavy smoke spilling about everywhere. During lunch, I saw that the sink was still filled with a hazy fog.

Here’s a bit of the bubbly that Jane and Chris brought back to their desk:

After Mike mentioned it to me, I’ve made Seth Godin’s blog a part of my daily routine. And with the dry ice episode, it got me thinking a bit about businesses, and the products they deliver to customers.

When you deliver something to a customer, they may not always interact with it in exactly the way you intended. They may surprise you in how they go about using your product. For us, the ice cream was a pretty great treat… but the really memorable, fun, exciting part of the gift was by and far the dry ice.

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Aside: Sadly, I was a grumpy gus for most of the morning… and in a sour mood. When all the commotion hit, I was locked in on work and didn’t get up to take photos. Now, after the fact, I’m kicking myself.