Out of this experience came a new personal mantra: Always Be Marketing. This catch-phrase came to me as I tried to discover what it is that I actually do to market myself, my business, and my products. The answer fell somewhere between nothing specifically and everything specifically!

Another catch-phrase I bring up a lot when talking to other indie developers is Say Yes. This captures my belief that we developers are shy, scared, and would rather be programming than doing anything “out there in public.” So I often implore other developers to say yes to interviews, speaking engagements, etc., before your scared nerd-brain can take over and run screaming.

But Always Be Marketing sort of captures the same sentiment while driving the message home:

• The local user group wants me to present, should I go?
  Always be marketing.
• Another developer wants to co-market my product with theirs.
  Always be marketing.
• What the … CNN wants me to be a talking head?!
  Always be marketing.
• Should I really have a Twitter account and a Facebook account?
  Always be marketing.
• I don’t have time to monitor searches, comments, feedback.
  Always be marketing.

OK, I’m running dangerously close to being a world-class prick if I really reduce my conversational skills to this kind of catch-phrase smack-down. But you can bet this is what my  internal dialogue is going to sound like from here on out.

One of the challenges therein is getting the word out to … everybody. The customers, the press, other developers. The more people who know about you, the more likely they are to tell other people. You know, the whole viral thing, except Mac developers haven’t yet come up with a term for it that doesn’t sound like a sickness.

When I put on the One Finger Discount promotion last year, I was trying to tackle this problem on a small scale, and it worked. The excitement of the 20% discount, and the feeling of all this great software clumped together in one place inspired customers to check out lots of new things which had previous fallen beneath their radar.

But it was nonetheless on a small scale.

I’m excited to learn that Macworld Expo is taking the indie developer community to heart with this year’s show-floor offerings. A new $1250 entry-level exhibitor’s place gets you a spot at a kiosk with other indie developers, where you will be exposed to the thousands of enthusiasts and hundreds of members of the press who are expected to visit the show.

But Macworld has also taken a page from the One Finger Discount playbook, offering a free level of participation that closely mirrors the One Finger Discount model. The Indie Developer Spotlight invites developers from around the world to put their apps on sale for 20% off during the week of Macworld. In exchange, they get to be part of the virtual community and have their stuff listed on Macworld’s indie developer spotlight page.

I spoke with Paul Kent, Macworld Expo’s organizer, a few weeks ago. I tried to express on behalf of the indie community what we need from a trade-show like Macworld. Well, it’s not much different from what any business needs: maximum exposure for minimal cost. In our case, very minimal cost ;) Space on the show floor at an event like Macworld will never be dirt cheap. I have to imagine there are too many expenses in renting the space, paying for insurance, union laborers, etc. So $1250 feels like a very compelling price to me.

If you can’t afford that, or can’t make the travel work with your schedule this year, at least you can get in with the free, online community.

Mac Indie Marketing Blog: Fishing For The Big Picture

Dan does a good job of summarizing my version of the metaphor, which is essentially a mental model that customers will always be swimming by your offerings. Whether they get stuck on them or not is mostly up to steps you take to make the software more attractive, functional, and engaging. If they swim away, don’t worry. A new fish will swim back around, and even that “one that got away” is likely to come back to your part of the sea eventually.

But Dan turns the metaphor around, suggesting that when customers go actively seeking for a specific solution, the products should be viewed as the fish. The software or other solution is being fished for by a customer, so you want your product to stick to the hook, instead of somebody else’s.

We’re just dealing in metaphors here. At the end of the day we’re talking about products for sale and the desires of users. We want their desires to stick to our products. To that end, while I find Dan’s inversion interesting, I think it’s simpler to continue with a single model where customers are the fish (no offense intended!).

We don’t need to invert the model: if a customer is seeking out specific solutions or styles of application, our fishing metaphor already has an answer for that. It’s called bait! To recap, at any point in time, you’ll maximize your haul of new customers by:

1. Having a net in the water.
2. Having as large a net as possible.
3. Having as few holes in your net as possible.
4. Placing attractive bait in that net.

As a vegetarian, I really should have called this metaphor “Fishing For Tofu,” but I know that most customers would be even more offended were they identified as “the tofu.”

Lots to be jealous of. Ahem, inspired by. Cabel counts the 13 people — including new hires Neven Mrgan and Ned Holbrook — who make up the ranks of their development, design, and support staff. Everybody I’ve met from Panic has been a genuinely kind person whose desire to build great things is evident. Now they’re all doing that from an incredible new office in their home town of Portland, OR. Cabel seizes on the good news that, with a growing staff, they’re able to tackle projects more concurrently, and to be more responsive to their customer base.

Red Sweater is one of those “one-or-two person companies” that Cabel shows no yearning nostalgia for having once been. There are certainly advantages to going it alone. I call all the shots. No meetings. 100% profit sharing. Vacation days on a whim and without concern for obligations to coworkers. Never a petty squabble or philosophical disagreement.

But never an agreement, either. I don’t want to be alone forever. I imagine Red Sweater evolving into something resembling a Panic, Rogue Amoeba, Bare Bones, or Omni Group. The advantages of scale and camaraderie that come with modest growth seem to outrank the limited, mainly ego-protecting advantages of solitude.

As I look forward to growth, I take inspiration from these great models. A long-term, sustainable Mac software business doesn’t have to be built from behind a faceless corporate wall. Each of these examples started as a small group of people with their minds set on delivering a great application. Then they did it, and eventually they profited. That’s a starting line most of us can relate to, and endeavor to imitate.

But other operational priorities are harder to agree on. When you start to look at the ways in which these companies and others like them grow, you discover that every one of them has vastly different priorities about what part of the company to invest in and when.

It struck me while reading Cabel’s post, for instance, that Panic apparently has no marketing staff. And yet they’re one of the best known brands in indie Mac software. Paradox? Is there something about Panic’s product and staff that does its own marketing? Or would they be an even bigger success had they hired a marketing person from the start? Smile On My Mac, by contrast, consists of just three people, one of whom is completely dedicated to marketing. Is this a waste of revenue or a brilliant component of their plan for world text expansion domination?

Office space is another area of dramatic diversity. Panic and Omni each embrace the value of a centralized, beautiful office space where their employees can work and play, side by side. At the absolute other end of the spectrum, Rogue Amoeba enjoys the benefits of a virtual, internet-based office. In particular, no office rent, and they can hire people from anywhere in the world without relocation concerns.

While the choices a growing business faces are numerous, I feel lucky to have so many stellar examples to compare and contrast. And while I may hesitate at choosing which direction to turn when I come to a fork in the road, I’ll take some comfort in knowing that many of those forks each lead to an equally exciting outcome.

I have read bits and pieces of the book, but I doubt I have read the whole thing. The short essays are perfect for a quick browse here and there. Often, I’ll navigate to the site in order to read just a few tidbits, before moving on with my day’s work.

But I haven’t read much of the book in a long time. When I was recently reminded of it by Manton Reece’s reference in his blog, I thought to myself, yes! I should read some more Getting Real! But again, the struggle of being faced with all those bite-sized morsels, and having to choose which to delve in to.

My solution? The Random Reality bookmarklet.

Just drag the link above directly to your bookmark toolbar. Now when you are in the mood to “get real,” you can jump to a random essay from the book at the click of a button. If you feel like reading more of the book, just click the bookmark again.

Of course, if you love browsing the book, it might make even more sense to buy a copy in PDF or paper format. But even if you own a copy and have read through it, you might enjoy the occasional dose of random reality in your life.

Windows Ads

The prevailing thoughts on the internet seem to be that these ads are ridiculous, that they make no salient point, that they are barely funny, and that they are a pathetic, misguided attempt by Microsoft to rekindle affection from a public that has grown quite accustomed to viewing the company as a stodgy old curmudgeon.

I think these ads are genius. Or if not genius, as close to genius as Microsoft could ever dream of coming. If I was one of Microsoft’s competitors, I might not be quivering in my boots quite yet, but I’d be thinking, “my god, I am wearing boots!”

Most critics of these ads point out, quite rightly, that the message doesn’t ask viewers to buy anything. If an ad doesn’t ask you to buy something, surely it’s a failure. I find this assessment flawed by default. Come on, people. Surely you, as sophisticated citizens of the internet, can appreciate that advertising is an art more than a science. If you want to criticize these ads, come up with something deeper than their failure to clearly condense into 30 seconds what purchasing action a consumer should take!

A more savvy viewer will notice that these ads are not meant to influence the immediate buying patterns of viewers, but instead to alter the long-term impression of the company that develops and markets the world’s leading desktop computer operating system. The company, Microsoft, is at once desperate to change your impression of it, but at the same time in no particular hurry to do so.

Imagine yourself in Microsoft’s position. you’ve got some 90% of the market share for computer operating systems, and you’re facing increasingly negative reports about the public’s impression of your place in the world. You’re a cold, hard company. You’re not very much fun. You don’t care about innovation. You’re a sleeper in a dancer’s universe. You’ve got no soul. You’re a plain old, boring, damn it all ridiculous stick in the mud. Microsoft, you suck.

If you’re Microsoft, and you’ve grown tired of these assessments, you wouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that owning 90% of the market and having a bajillion dollars … is a pretty good place to start from, in turning around your public image.

So begins the patient public image reform. When rumors started swirling about Microsoft enlisting Jerry Seinfeld to help sell its wares, the reaction was appropriately cynical. Come on, Microsoft. It’s going to take more to spin Windows than asking last decade’s comics to stand up for it.

But the ads that have actually come out, so far, are nothing like what anybody might have expected. They are so random, indeed so touchy-feely, that the universal reaction among the “smart-asses” I know, is to declare them ridiculous, not-funny, and utter failures.

These people are expecting something cliche from Microsoft, and instead the company has handed them a revolution. While Seinfeld’s collaboration with Microsoft has been widely heralded as a long-overdue reaction to Apple’s Mac/PC ads, Microsoft has instead taken a completely different path. And people can’t stand it.

I propose that Microsoft’s ads, with their mysterious yet evocative plot, are the most creative and purposeful ads ever to come out of the company. While devoted Apple fans might relish in declaring them an utter failure, I make the opposite assessment. These ads are the last best hope Microsoft has at erecting a dam in the face of a tidal shift towards Apple. Microsoft’s relative silence over the past few years has damaged the company. While Apple has charged the public’s mindset with compelling 30-second Mac/PC aphorisms, Microsoft sits idly by, taking the punches and sucking up the pain of each landed blow.

With these first ads from the Seinfeld era of Microsoft marketing, we see a company that is no longer simply spittling up blood, but instead spraying it in the face of its opponent. If Apple has been wondering when the competition will strike back, the answer is now. With a vengeance, albeit a somewhat mysterious one.

People ask what the point of Microsoft’s ad campaign is. What are they trying to convince us of? What do they want us to buy. Who are they trying to fool? If you have to ask, then you won’t be convinced. Microsoft already controls 90% of the market, and only a subset of the other 10% cares to call into question the motives or quality of these latest ads. The very fact that Microsoft can dance at all will be enough to sell them as belle of the ball to most who look on. So if you think the ads suck, don’t worry, you’re not the target audience. Laugh away!

If you’ve ever visited the web site, you’ll stop dead in your tracks as we did when you notice the column of stickers where store meets street. This bit of vandalistic flair adds some rough texture to an otherwise very polished store experience.

As you might expect, I’ve been really obsessed lately with the idea of finished products, and with what makes an overall customer experience positive, whether it be in software or in the real world. What I find interesting about the Threadless retail store is that it embodies many of the same usability considerations that a piece of successful software would. It’s aesthetically pleasing and makes it easy to accomplish what you want. Heck, it even runs on the Mac!

The Threadless retail store is a product built of silicon, wood, and cloth. Just look at that awesome wood sign on the retail counter. These touches are the equivalent of pixel-perfect considerations when designing the visible elements of an application.

Perhaps what’s most interesting from a computer nerd perspective is the degree to which software literally plays into this store-product. Looking around the small, well-organized space, you’re greeted by a simple repeating UI element: a column of t-shirts with a computer screen over them. The computer screen alternates between basic information about the shirt, and pictures of people wearing it, so you can have an idea of how cool you’re going to look when you buy it.

The Threadless web site has to emphasize “virtual impressions” of the shirts, because they can’t offer you the tactile experience of holding the shirt or trying it on. The retail store is a bit of the inverse. They offer giant stacks of shirts, a dressing room, and a friendly staff. Oh, and there’s also a bunch of monitors in case you are looking for just a bit more information before you finish your buying decision.

The sheer quantity of computer monitors really struck me. I can imagine bigger, less imaginative clothing retailers salivating over the idea of such a “wired” store, but being incapable of accomplishing it. First of all it’s expensive to buy a bunch of monitors (though note that they’ve used Dells instead of Apple for the multiple monitors). Second, you have to have somebody with half a technical brain-cell on board in order to make something like this work. I would guess that a store like Urban Outfitters would kill to have this kind of setup, but the chances of them making it work in all bajillion of their outlets is close to nil. This is an advantage that Threadless has in coming from the computer world to the physical world. This is just a web site that happens to have a retail store.

Most of those monitors display one-way information, but the software experience here is also interactive. Remember those Macs on the retail desk? I imagine the ones facing inward are for running the register or whatever. But the ones facing outward are all about us. So that we’ll feel loved, so we’ll have a good time, and of course, so we’ll smile when we buy the shirts.

How fitting that I’m wearing a plain-white t-shirt in this photo, because the whole point of this contraption is to put customer faces on more of those tall Dell monitors. This time, ones in the front window of the store, facing the street. The monitors are arranged above real t-shirts on mannequin busts, such that customer’s face gets loaded into it, and it sort of appears like they are wearing the shirt. The sun glare when we visited was too great to capture the magic of this feature, but Flickr user littlepretty captured a night shot that conveys it well.

Putting the most unique and customer-concerned feature of your store on the street so every single person who walks by will be intrigued and impressed? That’s a darned good finishing touch.