“Anything they ask, we try to accommodate,” Pilloud said. The team will continue to fine-tune the Gigi service for next year to improve the 28% adoption rate.

Image for article titled Behind the scenes with Gigi, the TED service that delivers Diet Cokes, tampons, and a warning to an amorous husband
Image: Ryan Lash / TEDPhoto: Ryan Lash / TED

Inspired by the success of the first Diet Coke delivery service, the team took the ”surprise and delight” strategy to heart—getting caught up in an apparent love-triangle along the way.

The team told Quartz about a man who texted Gigi throughout the conference with messages like, ”I’m at the hotel, hungover, I’m watching the live stream” or “Look at what this guy [the speaker] is wearing.” The team took turns trading witty comments with the attendee, to the point that his wife, who was also attending the conference, became suspicious. The team realized what was going on when the wife chatted an SOS to Gigi one night. “I think my husband is seeing someone else,” she wrote in.

Caught in the “love triangle,” the kind-hearted Gigi team devised a playful intervention. The team wrote a ”love note” enclosed with a chocolate bar and left it at the conference information desk for the husband. “Actually, it was not so much as a love note, as a warning,” laughs one of the Gigi’s. The note said, ”I think your wife is on to us.”

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