From Fashion to Software: Product Drops Can Surprise Your Customers

Episode Transcription

Meghan:
When it comes to product drops, ask yourself what will get people complaining? Welcome to Better Product. I'm Meghan, and this episode features inspiration prompted from our Slack conversations. Christian and I read an article recently on Built In NYC by health costs, all about product drops. Listen to our conversation as we discuss the origin of drops and how they've infiltrated the product world.

Christian:
Okay. Hold on Meghan. Before we get down into it, I'm from the Midwest and I am not from a big city. Explain to me what a product drop is.

Meghan:
So product drops originated in the fashion world. Basically it's whenever there's a limited edition, maybe say sneakers being released or any sort of other fashion line, they'll do it in a drop. So they build a bunch of hype around it. They say, "Okay, we're going to release this drop at this time, and then there's only a limited amount of product that you can buy."

Christian:
I feel like those were born out of a few things. I think clearly, New York is big for it because fashion is big there, but I feel like it's also... Product drops are big in larger markets because it's so hard to get people's attention in those. I feel like there's this way, but I also feel like something inherent to product drops in the physical world is that you can make the inventory limited. So you can make just a small run of something. So then you do a drop to try to get people to go buy it and then they're over. So there's that aspect of it too.

Meghan:
Right. So what this article has started to do and what got us talking about it was how does... This new fashion product drop has now started to infiltrate the software market and specifically even heading towards the B2B software market. So what is a software drop look like, a product drop, a feature drop in a world where those things aren't necessarily limited in a way that physical products can be?

Christian:
So the one that caught my eye in that article was from Stir, usestir.com. It's a financial studio for collaborating, splitting revenue, money and metrics all in one place. So it's really for this new wave of creators that are building businesses online. So it helps them manage their finances and revenue. So like quick end books for traditional businesses. So it's like that, but for creators. So anyway, in the article they mentioned Stir, that's the company, that's the digital product, but they had this product drop called OnlyTweets. And actually if you go to onlytweets.co, right at the top, it says, "A drop from Stir." So this was a feature to make it easier to help creators monetize on Twitter. Twitter made some updates so that you can start accepting payments on there and put paywalls on your content. So Stir is helping you manage your for creators.

Christian:
So it created this ancillary product that wasn't a part of its financial studio, but was still related to what it did. So I thought that was a great example of a product drop because it's not... Maybe it'll live forever, maybe not. It's not a part of the core platform that Stir is building, but it is connected and it's in the same ecosystem. So it does drive brand awareness and it drives demand for the product. So I liked that example.

Meghan:
I actually... So my favorite example from the article was one of the funnier ones. That's not surprising, but there's a studio based in Brooklyn called MSCHF or M-S-C-H-F, and we've actually been talking about them for years in our design channel. Every once in a while, they'll drop something that we'll share, because we think it's funny. So past examples have been Times Newer Roman, which was a font that's just like however much like 125% larger or something, so that it helps students meet page requirements faster. So they actually did in collaboration with Lil Nas X. They did the Satan shoes, but before that, I think they must've been inspired by the Jesus' shoes that they originally did.

Meghan:
A couple of years ago, they had holy water in the soles instead of blood or something and Jesus on the side. So they have done physical and digital product drops. They also had something... One's Netflix Hangouts where you could be watching Netflix and looking like you're on a conference call. So that was a digital product rather than physical. But I think most of them are either limited time or limited number, and that's one of the biggest things that we have been noticing about these drops is that there's some sort of a scarcity around it.

Christian:
Yeah. I think that's the hardest part. So when you think of a product drop, it's hard to translate to the digital world because digital is infinite. There was still a physical element to the digital products, but once the cloud took hold and then all of these companies shifted to the cloud, it's like we've lost the concept of scarcity, but I feel like there's got to be other ways that you can create scarcity with these products.

Meghan:
Yeah. There has to be. Something we do from a brand perspective as well to create that impression without actually limiting the amount of downloads or users is by starting with a wait-list before the product actually gets released. One side of it is scarcity, one side of it is that VIP feeling. So you get people on a wait list, they feel more important, they feel like they're getting it on the ground floor. That's a trick we use from a product marketing and brand perspective.

Christian:
And I think the article talks a little bit about how... They talk about the lizard brain and this whole exclusivity maximizes hype. So the article is great. I thought it slanted a lot towards the marketing orientation on how do you create buzz? How do you use it as PR? And that really, I totally get that. I don't think there's any doubt that product drop's going to help with that. I'm still thinking more, "All right. So how would we translate something that's got this consumer orientation to the digital world of products?" So I think obviously you could build hype around something. So you could do it for that. I want to give one example too that I just saw recently that does it around content. So Peloton, are they digital product company? No, they're a physical product, but most of the experience of it is digital through the interface with their app.

Christian:
I was looking and they do this all for one music festival. It's all digital and it's a music festival that they put on where they're featuring artists that are tied in to certain instructors and things like that. So I don't know where that falls in this. It's partly like a marketing campaign, but because the whole app is centered around the experience you have with the instructors, it stands to me that creating this music festival is like a product drop to them because their product is their classes.

Meghan:
Yeah. That could be maybe another key identifier for a product drop, is it's something outside your usual day-to-day realm. It's something that your company probably wouldn't ever do otherwise. It's either in a different industry or a different medium, or maybe that's a way to limit it in another way. It's like you're limiting it to this one drop. You're not going to ever do anything else like this because it's not really in your wheelhouse.

Christian:
Our CEO talked about when we work with clients, that every once in a while you've got to take a Hawaii trip. And what he meant by that was couples have to go take a trip to Hawaii at some point to just get away and meet each other. So with clients, we have to have meetings that are social, that are not around doing the work. I wonder if even as I'm thinking about the Peloton and as you were talking and thinking, how could you use product drops as like a Hawaii trip for your customers? Because especially with B2B, it becomes like water. You just use it all the time. So if you're in sales, you might use Salesforce or Pipedrive. If you're in design, you're using Figma or Sketch. It's great. It's a great tool, but how can you spice things up a little bit? Well, utilizing this concept, the product drop might be a way to do it.

Meghan:
I really like that perspective. I know we cringe at this word now after hearing it for so many years, but it's another way to delight your customers outside of your core product.

Christian:
I think it's okay. We're going to let that word pass because you're right. You do need to delight people. I think what you're describing is you almost have to surprise people. What's better than a delightful surprise? And I think that's what this can be. You have a product that can become almost mundane, but how do you surprise someone? Not in a scary way. Don't take this weird.

Meghan:
Do you know what [inaudible 00:09:03]?

Christian:
I'm scared now.

Meghan:
So Panera's whole philosophy, basically what they do at Panera to keep up or keep ahead of the curve is every so often, they ask themselves, "Okay, if I were a competitor of Panera, what would I be working on right now? What would I be doing?" And then they try to get out in front of that. And recently they did something so strange. They released a swimwear line. What a way to surprise your customers?

Christian:
This reminds me when KFC came out with the KFC Shop and they had like their kernel pillow and this is great. So I think that there's silly ways that you can bring that as long as it's somehow tied. I think, for me, because I come from design, I come from product, I'm always looking for ways to make it relevant and I think going back to Stir, why I like what they did, it wasn't just a gimmick. I think gimmicks can be fun, but they're very superficial and they're really fleeting. And I think if we were to take this conversation to figure out how could we really experiment something like this? In a B2B world, I think it's important that it does tie to something that's valuable because it'll always be hard to build off of a gimmick. You can't... It's a one-off, which is cool in the sense that you could build a one-off app, you don't have to maintain the app. You just build it once or whatever, but it's also expensive from a marketing standpoint to do that and not be able to leverage that in any way.

Meghan:
From a product perspective, drops need to add some sort of value and not just be some sort of gimmicky delightful thing that you offer customers.

Christian:
I want to re-imagine Slack with a product drop perspective for a second. So recently, Slack came out with Slack Huddles, which is basically trying to just make it easier to do phone calls, but they've had a way to call audio and ring somebody, but this is almost more like the Clubhouse model where you just start a huddle and it's open and you can just join and leave and things like that. So it's almost like coupling the Clubhouse model with Slack channels. Really smart, and I've done it and the call is really crisp. But all right. So I'm going to go backwards though, because I don't think they handled it well from a product drop lens, which is I only found out about it because I saw a little icon. I was like, "Oh, what's this?" I clicked it. "Oh, okay, cool." And then told somebody at work, our defacto head of IT, also our principal designer, John Moore, then quickly tells everybody, "Oh, here's how you use." And he gets all jazzed, "That's cool."

Meghan:
And then everybody who was in client meetings got 18 notifications like, "John Moore is in a Huddle with Pius."

Christian:
Right. So great advertising, now everybody knows. Right? But I think to me, that's the opportunity for B2B products to inject a little bit of life into the product. It's really seamlessly built into the product already, but it's so new and why couldn't they have tried it in a different way? So imagine the most extreme example would be that they create Slack Huddle and it's a downloadable app, it's a totally different app and it maybe integrates with Slack. So there's one way. So you could download the app. So why would you do something that extreme? I think one of the reasons you would do it is because it would attract the people who are already Slack advocates to begin with, and if you do a separate app, it's really a test of that interest in something. So if they do that, you already understand who are your most interested customers?

Meghan:
Another thing they could have done too is use it as a tester for Slack Huddle. So let's say a year ago, they released that separate app and they just called it Huddle and it would set like a drop by Slack and everybody downloads this new app and then they can see how people are using it, if they're liking it, if they're finding it valuable and that's what could have helped them determine whether or not to add it to Slack itself.

Christian:
No, you're totally right. If we take that even further from a product experimentation lens, it allows you to then test little things a little more easily so that if you did roll it into the product, you actually have better data to figure out like, "Oh yeah, we released this and people don't use it in this particular way. They use it in this other way." So I think there's opportunity there for sure. Could have done a product drop, Slack, call us next time, is where we're headed with this and we will help you brand it, we'll help you do it a drop. We'll do an integration. Okay. Let's bounce to one more idea here, because I think it's important that as we're taking these trends, that we try to find ways to connect them to, I think what our audience is building, which is often going to be B2B, it's going to be tools.

Christian:
We're not all in the lucky position to deal with just consumer goods where we can try to experiment all the time. I'm going to tea this one off for you, Meghan, for you to take on, because you did this with the design team. There was little inklings of this idea, but the product that I think we could brainstorm on that is ubiquitous like water today is Zoom.

Meghan:
Yeah. Zoom, I feel like we've talked about this on this podcast before. Maybe this is just a rant that I go on. Is that Zoom has a core product that everybody needs. So they don't really have to do a ton to improve it, but that means that there's probably a lot of potential out there when it comes to brainstorming what they could possibly do as a drop. So Christian and I decided we're going to think about that today.

Christian:
First off, we should note that's Zoom's done a really great job building a platform that other people can build an integrate with. But I still think it's at danger getting left behind, especially as we get to this moment in time where people are going to start coming back to work. So how can they leverage that to create a product drop that gets their brand top of mind and maybe creates a new association that's not pandemic oriented, but becomes hybrid office oriented?

Meghan:
Yep. Hybrid office or even back in the office. Maybe there are multiple offices at a company. So one thing that they do have is a Zoom room, which is where you can set up a physical room in an office to be able to connect easily to Zoom meetings. So you have everybody at the conference table in the office, one or two cameras for that conference table, and then a TV where they can see everyone else's faces who's calling in. So that's made it really easy for people to start to transition to hybrid meetings, especially. So one idea maybe for a Zoom product drop could be to think about that transition from fully remote to hybrid and then to even fully back in the office.

Meghan:
Let's say that there are two different offices for company like ours. So we have the Indy office and then we have the New York office. And imagine that each of those offices had a Zoom room, and then what if they had some sort of a live feed product feature, whatever it is, dropped, where if you were connected or in one of those Zoom rooms, you could see that other room 24/7? You could just see whoever's in there as long as there weren't any meetings going on. But in more of one of the social spaces in the office, it could be cool to connect them via Zoom room that way.

Christian:
Maybe it's called the Zoom live feed product drop. So I like it because I actually had to oversee the creation of the Zoom rooms at our office and you have to go online and buy a Mac mini from Apple, a Logitech camera and speaker, and then if you need extenders, you get extenders. The concept of a Zoom room is basically just Zoom using a bunch of other people's hardware in a room. Well, what if you package that together and created a limited edition drop of all those things bundled together? Because going online right now on Zoom, it is an unsexy, old school purchase order type approach and it's really not exciting. It should be a lot more exciting than it is.

Meghan:
So they could bundle and brand all of the physical products that they need to sell in order to create these Zoom rooms, and then also put their own Zoom stamp on it because these are everybody else's physical products with this kind of live feed feature or product.

Christian:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's not like you have to change the product entirely. I mean, all we're describing is a different packaging around it. Then, like you said, let's say there's a live feed functionality in Zoom, that could be its own app. So imagine you download Zoom live feed. Here's why I propose it for Zoom. Zoom is getting to be very boring and background to people, which is totally fine. People are going to still pay you money, but to keep top of mind, especially as I think, like I said just a minute ago, I think as we go back to work, the ways we view remote and hybrid work is going to change.

Christian:
Get Zoom's brand out there. I've always felt like the danger for Zoom as a brand is it will always be tied to working from home during 2020, the pandemic. Great for their business, but I don't know. That's just a crappy long-term brand association. How could you tie your product to something new? Not in a super like literal way, but just do something new. I feel like this live feed would be a way to do it, even if it doesn't work out.

Meghan:
Yeah. And especially because the live feed is built on the new world idea that in the new world, we're going to be hybrid or back in the office. So if you really wanted to make a splash in the market, indicate a change to the market, hint, hint, nudge, nudge, Zoom, we know what we're talking about when it comes to branding.

Christian:
And I think the reason why a product drop is good for this is because the trend is temporary, the move back to work. It may not work out. We've talked about doing this live feed that was inspired by another agency that did it for a long time, but there is the idea that you can connect offices with that. Even if you're not like just performing on Zoom, it's just like a live feed, it may not work out, but just create a new product to just change the conversation. And I almost guarantee that even through that, either A, you're going to find that actually this is amazing. You're going to sell more Zoom rooms, gets it in offices where there may be not wouldn't have paid for it, or B, you might find that people then say, "I actually wish it did this."

Christian:
I don't even know what that would be, but you don't know what you don't know until you actually run an experiment. Just get something out there to see how people might take it. So I could go brainstorm about this forever with you, but I think we have done a lot of great free work for the Zoom company. So we'll stop there.

Meghan:
And Slack, we'll be sending you a bill.

Christian:
Yeah. Right. So I think it's good though, because as we're covering these trends, I always want to think about, "All right, how could we actually help translate it to the real world?" So if you were to capture a product drop, what's one core way you would advise someone to think about it if they're doing a B2B app where you take away one thing from this?

Meghan:
How about I take the product marketing brand side and you take the product side? So for B2B companies thinking about product drops from a product marketing and brand perspective, if you can't limit the actual number of users that you're going to want to have on this, because that's how you make money, I would say that you should limit those drops in other ways. So either maximize exclusivity with things like wait lists or invite only type messaging or gatekeeping, and then also maximize hype leading up to it. Maybe even make it a surprise. So hinting at it for weeks, months, and then finally it drops. And that's the way you get around that scarcity of usage for a typical drop.

Christian:
So I'll take the product side, but I think some of it is tied to product marketing, which is one thing you should think about new feature, new major release coming out, don't just rely on the typical release notes. Think about how you could package that as its own product, how it could almost reinvigorate your users to try something new. Maybe take your daily active users, that's typically a great metric, and actually imagine that you had to start from scratch again. How would you attract them to use your product in a different way? And then two, I would say look at it from an experimentation. It's a big-end product. So AB testing, or even just throwing out new features to see how people react to them, package that up in a product drop and use that to your advantage by attracting your most diehard users and then letting them help drive your roadmap in fun ways and just see.

Christian:
If you're a believer in design thinking, you'll know that you just don't even know what will come out of something. So just embrace that. And I would say three, get away from... When you're scaling a product, everything doesn't have to fit into the same framework. Maybe just embrace... Let's not even worry about how this integrates with our product and just do a one-off to just see how people behave before trying to weave it into your product. So we asked each other for one, but we both gave two or three things.

Meghan:
Well, and I'm going to give one more because I think [crosstalk 00:22:03]. When in doubt, when it comes to the actual product or marketing, so this could apply to testing new features and it could apply to Lil Nas X's Satan shoes, when in doubt, when it comes to product drops, ask yourself what will get people complaining?

Christian:
All right. We're just going to end with that. Thanks for joining us and if you haven't yet, be sure to join The Better Product community. We've got all sorts of content and resources for you. And if you want more audio, don't forget The Business of Product is our latest show to join The Better Product network, and you can find that and more at betterproduct.community.