Social Memories

Background

Department Innovation Mail at Deutsche Post wanted an idea that would engage a younger audience, bringing to life the role social media plays in their lives but in a way that made good old-fashioned paper and the post surprisingly relevant.

Idea

A Facebook app was designed, which gathered together all of a user‘s data and converted it into infographics and pictures.

Users were then able to look at their lives on Facebook rearranged in a completely new way as a book. They could edit photographs, make changes but then have the book printed with a hardback cover and mailed to them.

The app revealed some intriguing statistics, such as: who the user’s most active friends were; which of their photos triggered most online comments; which friend took the most pictures; how their friends were organised by star sign.

Whatever the data, it was personalised and visualised.

Users could then choose to buy the printed book, buy a voucher for a friend to buy his or her book, or share their book of Social Memories online via their newsfeed.

Results

The app went viral within only a couple of days, together with numerous mentions on Facebook profiles, blog posts around the web and Twitter.

Our Thoughts

Developing relationships between paper and electronic forms of communication, between mail and digital, is something that exercises postal services around the world.

It’s not a case of using mail at the expense of digital or vice-versa but how the two can be used together to create messages or services that are the more convincing for being combined.

While this clever idea doesn’t actually support mail as a medium, what it does is show how incredibly powerful paper-based forms of communication can be.

Leafing through your Facebook life, seeing how everything you do can be turned into a pie-chart or a graph is both hilarious and mesmerising.

Really impressive.