Be Real, Fill Real Needs, Sell It and Profit.
Simple, right? I don’t know much about “marketing” or “business development,” but if this isn’t a template for a simple, honest business, I don’t know what is.
We don’t need marketing. Customer Anthropology is the future. Strategies have changed and it’s no longer effective to have a traditional marketing model of yelling/broadcasting through the biggest proverbial bullhorn a company can afford (expensive launch events, advertising, PR, etc.). It is all about getting into your customers’ psyche, anticipating their reactions, and truly satisfying customers’ real needs.+
We don’t need marketing—we need customer anthropology from Apollo Sinkevicius
Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular “Facebook Games” era. (I’m focusing mainly on the first 10 minutes of the video about the recent successes of things like Guitar Hero, XBOX accomplishments, and Wii Fit.)=
Realness. I’ve written before about authenticity and how we crave it. I suspect this may be a result of the number of abstractions we come into contact with every single day. Think about how many abstractions your brain has to deal with to just read this. There is a computer. With “windows.” Built on top of a “file system” with “folders” and “files.” And then you get on the “internet” (which is not a real place) through your “browser” (which doesn’t take you anywhere because you’re still in your chair) to go to a “site” (which isn’t a site or location at all) to read some text on a screen. So, hi. How ya doin? Welcome to Abstraction City, population You and Me.
Abstractions are not bad. In fact, they are incredibly powerful. Case in point: math is an abstraction. All that computer stuff is abstraction. Corporations are abstractions too. But, the conflation of abstractions means we need to devise more meaningful ways to interact with and understand them. Lest, we feel no connection. We’re severed from a real world. Nothing bona fide, nothing tangible. We get confused. We get a handful of dust.
We all have experienced a point where we are immersed in an area that has too much abstraction. For me, it was Physics and Calculus in high school. My brain melted. I whined and cried and kicked and complained. I was awful company. For my parents, I suspect it’s all that computer nonsense. But, I suspect I’m better off than my parents: I’m not dependent on physics to easily talk to my kids. (And, really, thanks for trying, Moms and Dads. We shouldn’t take it lightly. Welcome to Facebook.)
To make these powerful abstractions more accessible, we need to have them appeal to innate human needs. It makes the abstractions valuable. And proving the value of something is the biggest question on marketers’ minds. You can call it “generating desire,” but, if you can make anything in the world, why in the hell would you make something for which you need to manufacture desire? We have enough needs as humans. We have innate human desires. Let’s use those. They are the realest thing we’ve got.
I want you to produce real, valuable, lasting objects and services that allow me to be social with the people I care about. Let me be loved by the people who love me, and let me love those that I love. Sell things that help me to express my identity and nourish my curiosity. Make things that utilize my propensity use tools and to play, my need for accomplishment and my delight in completion. Let me make something. Let me connect, let me excel, let me feel something and let me finish. Let me be a human being.
If you’re working in abstractions, let me touch things. (I mean, with my phone I can even touch things that are just software. So, it’s possible.) Let me noodle around and play with things. Let me explore so I can grasp the idea. Present information to me in more than one way so I can understand, but don’t give me more than one way to do an action. (Having multiple ways to achieve something usually makes me nervous.) If I’m going to be adventurous and explore, don’t make me feel like my touch will break things.
Make the amorphous, intangible real. Let buttons be buttons. Let text be text, your message be your message. Let your company be something that is composed of humans. Let your workers be people and let them make the good decisions reasonable, responsible, talented people would make. (You hired them because they were that, right?) And let my needs as a customer be paramount. Let me be king. Let me feel like these widgets you’re making were really made for me. And if they weren’t made for me, don’t feel bad telling me I’m not your customer. Let me be a good fit. If you make me a tool, let me grasp it completely. Make it feel like a custom-tailored suit. Let me master it. A master gunslinger never gives up the life of the gun.
We need to start chiseling away at ways to make these abstractions understandable, enjoyable and valuable to everyone. The technologies need to meet the late-adopters halfway in the real world. If it meets us halfway, we can suspend our disbelief. There’s a button on my iPhone. And I can push it with my finger. Sure, it didn’t depress, but I appreciate the effort, phone. Thanks. Guitar Hero is fun because it has that stupid little, plastic guitar. I mean, it’s fake, but geez, it’s real. It’s real that beer-drenched night when everyone is closing out the night doing the screamy sing-song chorus of Don’t Look Back in Anger. It’s as real as the baby doll or G.I. Joe we had when we were kids. It was real because it met us halfway, and we shared it with friends and we decided it was real. That’s all we need.
We’re all just people here looking for connection. We work for companies (abstractions), but they’re just conduits to connect people in trade, service and experience. We’re all connected and all dependent on one another, so let’s not try to forget that. It’s very real, but I suppose that’s an abstraction too.
