Schmap publishes a series of local city guides. They found some of my pictures of DC and elsewhere on Flickr and used them (with my permission) in their local guides. They just released Schmap Guides for the iPhone, basically iPhone optimized versions of their guides.
What was slick and considerate of them was that they emailed me about their new guides. And, even better, they included a link so that I could see what my pics looked like in the iPhone versions. They didn’t have to do that – they already have my permission to use my pictures – but I think it’s pretty smart to do so. Being an iPhone user myself, I was impressed that they had converted their guides and my pics over to the iPhone. It sounds cheesy but seeing my pics on a mocked-up iPhone on a web page really made me feel special. I’m sure it’s done with a big database but this little bit of personalization broke through my cynicism. It was a well-executed bit of one-to-one marketing.
