Daily dose

Items received from DSN: 15? 20? (who knows); Ratio of interesting to uninteresting items: 1:1 (not bad)
Have continued to log in eagerly to Accept the items from the Designers Showcase Network (see prvious post). Boxes of free stuff rattle into my inventory like rain onto ... onto land that is pretty damp already. However, present are always good, in my view.
On a serious note (to get that over with) I hope this is still going when I bring in students next academic year, since I could "persuade" them to sign up and it would give them regular practice in opening boxes and learning how to tell what you are supposed to do with stuff (wear, drag to ground, contemplate in wonder, send to trash). Also they could get some decent clothes out of it, because the stuff that is otherwise genuinely ok to pass round full permissions looks a bit dated in terms of textures and prim work.

You see here booty from a couple of days ago: a waterful complete with rocks and plants, a rose bush in a pot, a vase of flowers, and a little brazier. This was actually the box that the real present came in, but I thought the box was more interesting than the contents.

If asked who produced them, I'm afraid that all I can tell you is that the fire-thing came from a designer with the word Phoenix in their name, and the waterfall was from Perfect Prefabs. I know this as it is the first designer where I have gone and looked at their stuff, and I was sorely tempted by their Waterfull Cave grottos. I may yet indulge in another waterfall, though goodness knows I have enough of them already in my inventory. This was a good example of a designer I've visited some time ago, and it was useful to be reminded to go and look for new stuff.

The 2nd pic shows me peeking out from behind yesterday's boxes before I unpacked them, then using a couple of them: a corridor "set" (mainly aimed at fashion bloggers), another plant, the hat with flowers & a veil (cool, I think), a heart-emitting cookie (in my mouth) and the pose itself.
The final set of pictures are from Friday: longing in front of the boxes and then using the sofa. The reason I couldn't use the sofa to start with was that when I clicked to Sit on it, it gave the message "no place to sit", which is not the kind of feedback you expect from a chair.
In the end I found a place to click that allowed me to sit, but I would say I have identified a design fault.

Lessons in fashion marketing: 2

No. of free items obtained through DNS: 10 (good); No. of useful free items obtained through DNS: 7 (even better)
On Thursday had interesting meeting about possibility of having information literacy week and will blog that when have gone through usual tedious business of putting chatlog online, editing pictures, putting up link to chat inworld, announcing that same is available, plus this time intend to put out notice encouraging people to contribute ideas and possibly set up dedicated social networking site. Feel tired just thinking about it.
In meantime have joined the Designers Showcase Network as Consumer. This is something that had been at edge of radar, with fashion bloggers mentioning items from "DSN", but finally sprang into action when noticed that Chic Aeon blogged an intriguing tree from October Rust. Am a sucker for SL trees (hmm, almost an unintentional pun there). So followed v. useful explanation of how it works [which can't find atthe moment, but can use the DSN link above] and then popped inworld to sign up for a few channels, namely Female Fashion, Jewelry, Tools, Home & Garden and Poses.
Idea is that each designer contributes a free item. Each day a randomly selected sample of people get that item. No person gets more than 1 item per channel per day. No one gets more than 1 item ever per channel from the same designer.
Gain from designers point of view is that for a mere 250 Linden and cost of designing item get possible access to new markets, or reminding existing customers that they exist. Obviously the hope is that you say "Wow, really great [insert name of item] must buy more!" and tp over to store to buy.Benefit to Consumer is that you get free stuff. This is definitely a plus (see below) and adds excitement of "what will I get free when I log on today!"
Down side is that you want to log in to see what free stuff you got today, so addiction factor of SL goes up notch. Also adds IMs, thus meaning some useful IMs may get capped. Also is matter of inventory bloat, but at 25,000 items, what are another few? Or so I say to myself.
I am pictured with some of the best items above. Am rather picky about fashion things, so neitherof 2 outfits were my thing, and only one of the jewelry items, so outfit is Model's Own, as they say. However, am using one of the free poses, from Reel Expression. Also can see cute piano stool from Kunstkammer (today) and Bed from Lyla (yesterday, see 2nd pic showing it in my bedroom), plus 2 tools. Translation one is a board where you drop in notecards in different languages (should you be able to translate into all those languages) and then people click on relevant flag to get them. Designer sells translation services, so obvious where THEY see money coming from. This COULD be used to dispanse notecards about Information Literacy in different languages, is my thought on this - even just "what is 'info literacy' in ..."
Other tool appears to be full permissions, and when you click it, asks for you to type something in (you would drop in a texture saying what you wanted e.g. "type in your idea for information literacy week") and then it dispenses whatever object you put in, as a gift. Am thinking of commissioning some jewelry with the info literacy international logo, that would be IMHO cool.
Crunch point is: have I spent money with any of these people? At this stage answer is: no. However, will certainly visit new-to-me Lyla and (whoever it was designed the full perms tool, am not inworld at present), also it reminded me that Dark Mouse (cute bangle) and Kunstkammer are good designers. So think this is good marketing idea.
Research perspective: one of my key interests used to be the pricing of electronic information, so marketing is topic know something about; promotional strategies for virtual goods ....
Final pic has nothing to do with all this and advertises Infolit iSchool June festival. Bring your friends.