Must Market

This post explores an apparent contradiction in The Lost Interview. In a post from the weekend Steve Jobs On How Content Truly Is King (http://sco.lt/8EwUrZ ) Jobs discusses the importance of keeping "Process" people away from artists like himself.

Here Jobs discusses the "idea disease". Idea disease is not understanding the need for process. Instead of catching a genius in an apparent contradiction this post discusses the contradictions inherent in product development.

Truth be told nothing would get created if there wasn't some magical thinking happening. Magical thinking is our human ability to over estimate what we bring and under estimate what we face. I did this when I rode a bicycle across America.

I would argue that the only way I make such a ride is to under estimate the trouble and over estimate the joy (lol). I note how Black Swan author Taleb says our human condition is one of constant over and under estimation.

Taleb sees such human arrogance as the cause of stock and home bubbles and so BAD. Perhaps it is this magical naive thinking that creates art and grace too and this piece explores the idea that our "idea disease" may be the source of all art, beauty and grace.

Karen Note
When launching a new product, it is important that customers understand what problems your product is solving. You don’t have time to tell a long story so you need to make sure your message is effective in creating a desire to learn more.

This is where context can help. If you are trying to tell a story about your product, context is the background information that helps the scene make sense. Without this context, you leave it up to the customer to figure it out on their own.

Marty Note
Love Karen's note. If you sensed customers NEVER figure it out on their own you match my 12 years of ecommerce experience. Here is how I thought of product page copy when I was an Ecommerce Director:

* Be FACTUAL about specifications.

* Provide scale via visuals (or video)
* Karen calls this defining the problems solved.
* Curate words or phrases from reviews when repeated.

* YOUR context as seller is facts.

* Use reviews for sentiment and emotion.

* Consider using video if products are complex.

* Never refer to something in copy that can't be seen.

We came to understand our role as the ecommerce team was more curators than sellers. To the extent we attempted to sell it seemed baseless, so we stayed factual and created a "Buzz Team" to write reviews and teach us how our customers thought, wrote and felt about our products. We ended up using some of THEIR copy in our campaigns. 

ABOUT Copy
Another important deep pool of context is your About page copy. If you lay out 5 key values in our about copy look for ways to tie any and all copy to one of those values. If we were discussing product X and it had tremendous attention to quality we could share empathy or similar stories to expand the context to reinforce our values.