Slimmy
The funny copy for Slimmy explains it is not for people with a “George Castanza wallet.”
STYLE WARNING: This wallet is not a magic trick.
If you have a “George Castanza wallet,” with over 10 credit cards, pictures of distant relatives, and 5 years of financial records, you WILL NOT be able to magically conceal the same contents in the Slimmy.
The Slimmy experience is about security, comfort and minimalism. Carry only what you need so that you are less exposed to theft, less emcumbered, and look better…
A Slimmy can help, but you have to want to change.
Mosso
The Mosso Story talks about how the company’s founders decided to scratch their own itch.
We were a two-man operation: a graphic artist and a web developer. Everyone said that for the sites we wanted to create, we really needed to get our own server and spend the time to manage it. But to us, that was as crazy as saying that to sell t-shirts online, we had to spend our time driving a Mack truck doing the deliveries. There had to be a better way to host our projects. Right?
We started Mosso because we knew there were others like us: other web agencies who wanted to promise their clients that their websites and email would work—always work—without being the ones responsible for all the technology.
Antipodes
How much story is there to a bottle of water? Antipodes water explains the idea behind its H2O.
First we wanted to source one of the world’s purest waters. It was a mystery to us why much of the bottled water in New Zealand was being shipped in from Europe – one of the most industrialised continents on Earth.
In contrast, Antipodes is sourced from one of the least populated countries on Earth and in a place renowned for pure water, Antipodes is rated as the purest.
Next we wanted to create the perfect sparkling water to compliment well crafted food and wine. To achieve this we added a fine bead.
Finally we wanted it to look good. It didn’t have to stand out on a supermarket shelf, because it would never be on one. We didn’t want it to stand out on a restaurant table either – even though it would most certainly be on one. We wanted it to compliment a table setting rather than dominate it. We believe the heroes of the table should be the wine and food, not the water bottle.
So we kept the bottle short and fat and we kept it clean and simple. We wanted it to look as pure on the outside as it in fact was on the inside.
That’s basically the story of us and the water – everything else is just bookkeeping.
Mike
on 13 Jul 07Oh, man, here we go. I have a feeling this is going to spark a pile of “how I love my (insert name) wallet” comments. I recall a wallet post about a year ago that must have been 100+ posts.
Cera
on 13 Jul 07Mosso not so great
Ed Knittel
on 13 Jul 07I have first hand experience with Mosso and I can PROMISE you it’s the worst service I’ve ever used. Their idea is one of the best ideas but their execution didn’t work. You should read the comments left in their forums from the many other dissatisfied customers who really wanted to see Mosso work. After awhile, though, you have to move on.
Dan Boland
on 13 Jul 07Not to be a snark, but the Slimmy page features two different spellings of Costanza on the same page. (The one with an “o” as the second letter is correct.)
Terry
on 13 Jul 07“On Writing, take 2”
Don’t screw up the use of the word “complement” by spelling it “compliment.” That is, unless their bottle also has a built in recording that says “your table setting looks beeeyoootiful!!”
See: http://www.bigringwriting.com/id29.htm
Ryan Bergeman
on 13 Jul 07Haha, yeah. Especially when you’re trying to sell $5 bottles of water (and that was just dividing the bulk purchase by 12; surely they’re more expensive when you purchase just one).
Ed Swindelles
on 13 Jul 07Compare the Slimmy to the ALL-ETT wallet. The ALL-ETT has been around a lot longer and is a lot cheaper. I’ve got one under my butt at the moment.
http://all-ett.com/products.asp
Bob
on 13 Jul 07I was browsing the wallet site and left it running in the background on another tab. The flash player for the Jimi Plastic Wonder Wallet ate about 95% of my CPU and damn near crashed my computer. They really need to rebuild that display!
Chris
on 13 Jul 07Not one to bash wallets, but the Slimmy reminds me of my JCrew “magic” wallet that serves the same purpose. It allows me to carry cash, my drivers license and maybe two more cc’s… just saying.
Spencer Lavery
on 13 Jul 07Crikey people sure are touchy about wallets.
Jason
on 13 Jul 07Rubber bands are the only wallet I ever use. Slip one around your credit cards, fold your fiat money in thirds. Simple.
Joran
on 13 Jul 07Nice examples of great writing written not by copywriters or writers but by artists.
carlivar
on 13 Jul 07Ah yes, bottled water. One of the funniest things about our society, IMHO.
Imagine, if you will, a giant shipping tanker, slowly moving across the Pacific/Atlantic ocean. Belching smoke, burning fuel, carrying an enormous load across all that water of… water.
Perrier and other imported French sparkling water is especially funny to me. Picturing a gigantic tanker going from France to L.A. via the Panama Canal full of crates of bottled French water is just ludicrous.
Glen Barnes
on 13 Jul 07@Ryan Bergeman: You can’t buy Antipodes by the bottle. It is only sold ‘wholesale’ and not in any retail stores to keep it exclusive. It is a really nice water but you are right – Frikin’ expensive!
Mark
on 13 Jul 07Deft stories, but like Seth Godin says, you have to be authentic and follow through. Based on some of the comments here, I’d say that Mosso and maybe even Slimmy failed the test. Also, with the possible exception of Mosso, I’d guess the blurbs were written by writers not artists.
Richard Banfield
on 13 Jul 07Matt, it doesn’t matter how great your story is, if your service sucks your ‘words’ are hollow and meaningless. I think Mosso has a great idea but as a customer of their’s I am truly disappointed with their execution. I wish it was different. The real story is that this might be one of those e-myth type stories where these designers tried to do something that they experienced as a problem but were not qualified to do. Stories are only as good as the source – else we call them rumors.
Andrew
on 15 Jul 07Am I the only one here who finds the concept of ‘exclusive’ bottled watered repulsive? It’s been shown time and time again that past certain very easy to reach threshold all water tastes the same.
Expensive packaging and flying it around the world does nothing but environmental damage.
See: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html
Edward
on 16 Jul 07I fully agree with your insightful perspective, actually there is a similar thread at Frontier Blog ( http://www.hwswworld.com/wp )
Nic
on 16 Jul 07Edward for the troll hat!
This discussion is closed.