Taking Gift Cards to a Whole New Level
Gift cards are everywhere these days and just this morning I heard an ad for Safeway that boasted their selection of 100 different cards, from pre-loaded meals at Earls to weekend getaways at a Marriott hotel – you can give anyone, anything this holiday season and it will all fit nicely into an envelope.
While browsing the Boing Boing Gadgets last night I came across the new Target Gift Cards, one of which doubles as a digital camera.
The camera comes with a USB cord, driver disk, instruction manual and a voucher for 40 free prints from the Target photo center. The camera runs on two AAA batteries an also has a self timer. [Coolest Gadgets]
Available in increments of $50 – $1,000 you can give that special someone a shopping spree at Target, as well as a 1.2 megapixel camera with 8MB of memory.
When giving or receiving a gift card, fees and expiry dates come to mind although apparently Target gets rid of all that mess and also gives you the option to reload the card.
Other creative offerings in Target’s GC department include the gift card/night light, gift card/USB key (64 MB), and the gift card/m&m candy tin.
It’s fun to see companies stepping up to not only engage their customers but to also help them get more use out of a little piece of plastic that would more than likely up in the trash after first or second use. I know if I had a little white Target dog USB key kicking around that it would get repeated use – as would the new sweater, socks, cosmetics, and cookies that the gift card would cover. It’s not much (the 64MB for example), but to me it’s that extra hint of personalization that can make this “I wasn’t sure what to get you” gift seem a little more special.
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Gift cards are so impersonal. It’s like ‘Hi I couldn’t be bothered to think about what you might like so here is some money and you can go out and buy it for yourself’.
@ Jenny – You got my husband a gift card for his birthday! :-O
What about for clients, teachers, that uncle that you don’t think is really your uncle but he always shows up at family events with knitted christmas sweaters or something, I think these are cute options anyway.
I did?
I think gift cards have their place. We did buy one for a swim coach once because we wanted to thank him but we don’t really know him enough to buy him a gift.
It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode when he gives Elaine cash for her birthday and she says ‘what are you, my uncle?’
In addition to Target’s camera gift cards, Best Buy (USA-only, I believe) will have its holiday gift cards double as portable speakers, complete with standard 3.5mm audio jacks. Weird times we live in.
Its a nice post about online shopping because Online shopping is fast becoming the most preferred mode of shopping whereby shoppers can reap the advantages of Internet shopping from the luxury of their homes.
LOL @ Jenny
I like gift cards. I think I must be hard to buy for… people never know what to get me. Perhaps that indicates a tendency toward buying myself just about everything I want (thus leaving no items on my wish list), but gift cards are great if you ask me.
Movies, itunes, restaurants… like ’em all 🙂
Gift cards are going to be more prevalant with everyone losing thier credit cards. At least you wont look foolish if you dont have credit using a gift card right?