So whilst queuing patiently at Monmouth today (in front of some super excited Americans, who Amy heard refer to London as “rad”) we slightly befuddled the very sweet baristas by asking for their milk carton. The carton in question is made by Ivy House Farm – and we think that it’s a lovely example of making effective use of House Media.

Now the Challenger Project is not short of inspiration on this topic – see videos from Perry at BigFish talking about Dorset Cereals and recent posts from Amy and Mark – but what really struck us about this example was its simplicity.

Every few days Ivy House Farm changes the message on the side of their milk carton. Last week we noticed that it was a celebration that the sun had finally come out and supporting condolences for dairy farmers hit by the supermarket milk price debacle, and no prizes for guessing that this week it’s related to team GB.

What they’re doing isn’t revolutionary- but it is clever thinking about how to do more with less: they’re printing the date anyway, so it costs them nothing to add a bit of their personality in there too.

And it worked. It caught our eye over the counter; we had a chat with the baristas about the milk, who promptly told us that we could buy it next door – an interaction (and future purchases) that definitely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

What little thing could you do, that might make a big difference?