The Importance Of Enthusiasm In Any Product. A video took the web by storm today entitled “Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple.”
Basically, it boils down Apple’s latest event into a series of superlatives. It’s a funny video because Apple really does have a pattern of using these types of words over and over again in its demonstrations. Cynics will say this is how Apple brainwashes the masses into buying their products, and gets people jazzed about the tiniest features. But I think there’s something much deeper here. While certainly there is some element of hearing something so many times that you start to believe it, that’s nothing new, any good salesman will do the same thing. You’ve undoubtedly seen used car commercials where the used car salesman uses superlatives as well to the nth degree. This is hardly an Apple-only phenomenon.
Another good example is Twitter. Speaking of the newest employees, Twitter’s new COO, Dick Costolo, just started at the company recently. For a long time, Google was in that realm too. The power of clarity. The quote below is from an interview Ray Ozzie did with Steve Gilmour, (full text on techcrunchit).
It is a comment on Google Wave: I just know from the Groove experience most recently, from the Notes experience before that, when you create something that people don’t know what it is, when they can’t describe it exactly, and you have to teach them, it’s hard. This point is, I expect, pretty obvious to most of you. I post it because of what it implies – if it’s hard to teach people then you have to spend extra effort doing it.
Moreover, getting people to pay attention in the first place is difficult and you will only have them listening for a short time, so your messaging had better be both crystal clear and compelling. It is amazing how often this point seems to get forgotten. This point is of critical importance for those of us in the startup ecosystem, where more often than not we are creating companies and products that take people into areas where they have never been before. The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The He. During my time at TechCrunch I’ve seen thousands of startups and written about hundreds of them.
I sure as hell don’t know all the secrets to building a successful company, but there are a few things I’ve seen that seem like surefire ways to ever-so-slightly grease the road to success. Here’s an easy one: make a video demo and prominently promote it somewhere where new visitors can find it. One that shows off the core function of your product without making people think they’re watching an ad or a pitch. And answer, as thoroughly as possible in 2-3 minutes, what it is that you’re bringing to the table. Here’s a sad truth: a lot of reporters really are quite lazy.
Consumers are even lazier. But just making a video isn’t enough – you need to make sure that the video actually conveys what the hell you actually do. Take Dropbox for example. There are plenty of other examples of companies using video demos to great effect.