iPhone App Review - Zippo and iPint

Michael Selvidge is back giving us some more iPhone App reviews, two that are great, and one…not so much.

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So everyone, including Barack Obama, knows that the slickest way to market your product (or candidate) is with a native app for the slickest phone ever, the iPhone.

As traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio, and newspaper slowly die-off, perhaps innovative measures like this are the next solution.

But you have to do it right. Two apps that get it right are Zippo Lighter and Carling’s iPint.

Zippo Lighter, “Lit by Moderati” as it says on the launching screen, is no joke. You get to pick from a selection of colors/patterns for your lighter, the flame moves as you move your phone, and the flame even turns blue and makes the phone vibrate when you hold it upside down. Flicking the lid open gives you a satisfying “click,” and spinning the wheel of the lighter produces a nice flinty “thwick”. It’s actually a genuinely cool app, and even though it’s simple, it’s an app that I haven’t just used once, it’s something that I play with a lot. It came in handy for last week’s Neil Diamond concert (seriously).

Carling’s iPint was actually available at the launch of the App Store, and kudos to them for being on the leading edge. The actual “game” within iPint is only mildly amusing, but pouring and drinking a beer is awesome, and like the Zippo app, it draws “Ooohs” and “Awwws” from all the iPhone uninitiated I show it to. There are several paid beer app called iBeer, but why do we even care to pay when we have iPint for free? Actually, people might pay, because for some reason that I don’t know, iPint is no longer in the App Store. Maybe Apple was thinking of making a competitive beer app and had it pulled?

Living in the US, I had never even heard of Carling. But I Googled them and found out that they are a top UK beer. Even if I may not become a loyal Carling customer, they reached someone in another market and got them interested enough to Google their product. If you’re trying to build awareness for your product, reaching people for the first time who don’t know you is always the hardest.

Lastly, let’s talk about a company who got it all wrong: Audi. I could go on about the Audi A4 Driving Challenge and everything that’s wrong with it, but it’s so awful that I don’t even want to dissect it. Let’s just say that the controls are so wonky that it’s more painful than fun. Between this game and reading the recent tweets from Carlo Longino of MobHappy, my opinion of the Audi brand is at an all time low. Re-badged Volkswagens they are!

So nice work, Zippo and Carlings, two brands with which I now associate the warm fuzzy feelings that come from a slick iPhone app!