

Ben the Bodyguard: The Perils of Promotion That's Better Than the Product - hornokplease
http://www.fastcompany.com/1708233/ben-the-bodyguard

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muhfuhkuh
It's the app store equivalent of the "big box" VHS craze in the mid-late 80s.
Video stores had precious shelf space and wanted to cram as many titles face
forward so customers can marvel in the variety. To make themselves unique,
dubious movie houses made their box art more elaborate: Larger (often twice
the size of the tape it held) and more "artistic" (textures, reflective
surfaces, holograms, blatantly explicit or exploitative covers, eye-popping
colors etc.).

I have a theory that computer book companies do their toned-down version of
that as well: Horrifically large and heavy books with large font sizes and
images inserted apropos of nothing. Sometimes I look that the O'Reilly Head
First or Wiley Dummies books and have trouble keeping track of the actual
content with all of the little margin drawings and asides and endless
admonitions festooned throughout (not to mention the little one-panel cartoons
that often don't make any damn sense at all). They are either large in size or
so thick that if displayed spine-first, they still take up a honking amount of
shelf space.

The Ben Bodyguard site is the big box/book phase of the app store: Visibility
at all costs = Sales (no matter how fleeting).

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hugh3
_Sometimes I look that the O'Reilly Head First or Wiley Dummies books and have
trouble keeping track of the actual content with all of the little margin
drawings and asides and endless admonitions festooned throughout (not to
mention the little one-panel cartoons that often don't make any damn sense at
all)._

Undergraduate textbooks, too. There's no reason why a first-year physics
textbook should be a thousand pages long; the same information presented
sensibly could fit in two hundred, maybe one hundred. But it sure does look
impressive to the committee in charge of choosing the textbook (and they never
have to carry it around or see the pricetag).

On my "to do" list is to write the 150-page freshman physics textbook. (But of
course if it existed we could only charge twenty bucks for it, whereas if I
threw in five hundred pages of unnecessary pictures and repetition I could
quintuple my commission...)

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steveklabnik
One thing that _why mentioned a few times is that textbooks should really be
more like 80 pages, max. We don't need index sections or setup directions,
those just get out of date quickly... present the information at a reasonably
high level, then get out.

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eru
What do you mean by `index section'?

I find an index to search for keywords at the end of the book quite useful,
but that's probably not what you meant, or is it?

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steveklabnik
Not keywords, but often books will come with what's basically `man foo | lpr`.
A big old reference section that'll just be bad with the next point release.

Of course, that means there needs to be an updated version of the book...

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niels_olson
A good index needs human hands; a great index can be invaluable. At one point
the indexer of Gray's Anatomy was appointed the editor!

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eru
I guess you did not get what steve was talking about.

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DougBTX
I don't know what he's talking about either.

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steveklabnik
Tech books often come with a section in the back that basically just reprints
the manual that comes with the software. It's not as bad today as it once was,
but you'd often see these big huge books that were essentially 1/3 API
reference. Publishers love to do this because it forces new editions to be
made with new revisions of the software.

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newmediaclay
Even if it doesn't live up to expectations of the cartoon, I can guarantee
more people will download this app than would have without that promotion. How
would that be a failure? Unless they spent a ton of time making the cartoon,
which they don't mention doing.

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patio11
_Unless they spent a ton of time making the cartoon_

I'm thinking that promotional site cost somewhere in the five figure range to
produce (perhaps less out of pocket, but if they were charging at their normal
billing rates, certainly).

Edit: Crikey, I may be underestimating.

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dasil003
Seems too early to consider it a failure. Maybe customers will be just as
vapid about their security apps as the creators?

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cosgroveb
Is this a good thing? People getting a sense of safety from an app made by
people who this article mentions don't care very much about security?

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dasil003
Definitely not, but on the other hand I don't think it causes too much harm
either.

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thibaut_barrere
That feels like the promotion article that tells us the story of the promotion
website that failed (or not) to promote the app.

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epo
EDIT deleted stuff which was in the linked article. Leaving ..

Of course the real product might be iPhone app marketing services.

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mcritz
This article assumes that people don’t want aesthetics, narrative, or style.
It might be over-the-top, but the app has a point of view and a valid
function.

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DougBTX
If it was to deliver, it would need to be a mobile version of trueCrypt - not
something you can do through the iOS API.

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rtc
seems like they are ignoring an opportunity for a pivot - their promotion
created demand for their web design services, but they want to be an app maker
so they don't pay attention to customers for anything other than apps.

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nhangen
That's a good point, but moving from selling products to selling client-based
services is a regression in the eyes of many.

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verysimple
Maybe it would be time to turn Nerd Communications back into Nerd Films. They
could use the app to promote the comic. How ironic.

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kunjaan
tl;dr <http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/benclipsmall.jpg>

