Marketing Playbook

Basecamp - Eating Dogfood, Part II

Here's part two of our discussion with Jason Fried of BaseCamp, 37Signals and Signal vs. Noise (click here for part I) about his business, his playing field, his play and his marketing secrets....

Marketing Playbook:
What about target customers? How did you think about the market for
Basecamp?

Jason Fried:
We started out thinking of the market as other folks like us. If we needed a tool like this, surely plenty of others did as well. We talked with our colleagues, clients, and friends in the industry and they confirmed our assumptions.

Small firms like ours are often stuck with subpar software solutions because 1. The big expensive mature products that exist aren't tailored for their needs, 2. They couldn't afford a mature product anyway, and 3. They don't have the time to build their own tool. So, they were pretty psyched when we (one of their own) built a product for them. And so far the response has proven everyone right.

Marketing Playbook:
You know the phrase "eating your own dogfood?" It sounds like you were both the proverbial dog and the dog food maker.

Jason Fried:
Definitely. We even used Basecamp to develop Basecamp. It really helped us refine the product, and I think people can sense that by the attention to detail. We would have never caught and improved the little annoyances and weak spots if we hadn't used the product during its development. Today we use the exact same version as everyone else so we know what everyone else is going through. I know some companies that develop software are always using their own latest beta or alpha, but that makes it easy to ignore the actual version's shortcomings. We want to stay as close to what our customers are experiencing as possible.

Marketing Playbook: What's happened since then?

Jason Fried:
Well, Basecamp has been widely adopted by all sorts of companies. Web design firms, advertising agencies, management consultants, schools, non-profits and government agencies. And, most surprising to us is the adoption by individuals to manage their own personal projects, their weddings, their home improvement projects, and their lives.

We've also been pleasantly surprised by the uptake from educators. Teachers are using Basecamp to manage their classrooms. They're posting homework assignments on Basecamp and students are even setting up accounts to manage group research projects. We're very pleased with the response so far. I'll leave it at that ;)

Marketing Playbook:
In terms of marketing, how would you describe your play?

Jason Fried:
Definitely not a dragrace. We didn't want to attack anyone. We targeted a different segment of the market and we built the buzz virally. I guess that would be a Stealth play. And we'll continue to keep it that way.

There are others out there now but we see them trying to one up each other on a feature-by-feature basis. I'm sure they will find appeal but for our customers we're keeping things simple.

Marketing Playbook:
How did you reach so many people? How did you execute on this play so successfully?

Jason Fried:
We were lucky -- we already had an audience. We've been building an audience with our Signal vs. Noise blog since 1999. We use the blog to talk about design, usability, simplicity, business and more. So, when we released a product that demonstrated we practiced what we preached, the audience was very receptive.

We also built in a lot of features that were interesting to a variety of vocal special interest groups. Basecamp allows you to subscribe to your projects with RSS feeds so the RSS community embraced it and promoted it. Basecamp uses CSS extensively for layout purposes so the heavily trafficked CSS gurus talked it up. You can also subscribe to your milestones with Apple iCal so the Mac folks just loved it and spread the word.

We have done some Google Adwords runs, but most of our business and traffic still comes from word of mouth.

Marketing Playbook:
Any other things important to your success that you want to share.

Jason Fried:
We're big believers in staying as close to your customers as you can. Use what they use. I answer all support emails personally -- mostly because I like to know what's right, what's wrong with Basecamp. I want to hear the praises and I want to read the reasons why people cancelled. Being so close to the customer, and building these personal relationships is what allows you to think like the people who keep you in business. And, if you don't think like they think, you'll be out of business quickly.

Another thing we believe in is open and honest communication. If we go down, we let people know we went down -- even if they'd never know about it since it was at 3am for 20 minutes. Be honest and clear at all costs.

Marketing Playbook:
Well thanks much Jason. This was great. Best of luck in all your future projects. We will be staying tuned.

Jason Fried:
Thanks so much, and best success with your book. I know a lot of people who can certainly use your advice ;)

Looks/Brains: skin deep or deep skins?

Check out Wildseed's Identity phone, where you get youth, beauty and brains with SmartSkins. The company just launched it's totally cool, totally new phone with Dobson and CellOne.

Marketing to the changing tastes of teens can be tough, unless you change with them. The folks at Wildseed have really done their playing field homework on this market and found that coolness, personality and the ability to change with changing tastes are key. Teens love to use mobile phones but find the phones themselves pretty boring. They also found this goes way beyond just cosmetics.

So their new phone technology, SmartSkins, allows you to do so much more to personalize your phone than change its' color. No need to be bored with your wireless phone ever again. Different SmartSkins deliver different themes, entertainment assets and styles. When you snap on your own SmartSkin over the phone it takes on a complete new personality to match your tastes from the including ringtones, games, screensavers and much more.

On top of that teens love to message each other so Wildseed built whta they think is the best messaging on any phone in the world. Since the features were designed for and by young consumers, the messaging on Identity looks a lot like IM on the desktop. Conversation boxes capture SMS, MMS and/or email all into one convenient spot. Your top ten friends can be assigned special Speed Lights status for a dedicated number and lights on the keypad tell you which of these friends is trying to contact you.

It is early days but we (and yes, we are investors in the company) think this lauch is very exciting. For additional news on the launch see Wireless Week.

Basecamp: Eat your own dogfood for health, wealth, massive popularity

Just had a very illuminating conversation with Jason Fried. He's
behind Basecamp™, the growing project management phenomenon, the very cool and very respected web design firm 37Signals, the wide ranging and
widely read blog Signal vs. Noise and co-author of the new book, Defensive Design For the Web.

Their story is a strong example of how great marketing doesn't have to be some big mystery. It shows how following your instincts, listening to your customers (and being one) and sticking to principles while executing like crazy, actually go a heck of a long way. A couple of key principles really stuck in my mind:
• Don't just eat your own dogfood. Be the dog, make the dogfood you want, eat it, and then tell the other dogs like yourself.
• Build your audience first, then give them something to buy and sell. If you can gain respect and trust and interest first (e.g. in your blog) then you have not only a receptive initial audience for your product but a group of potential evangelists.
• Keep things simple. You don't always have to have the most features or options. Less really can be more. Let the competition try to beat you on complexity - see how their customers like it.

Here's the full text of our conversation, in two parts:

Marketing Playbook:
How did you decide to build and launch Basecamp? Did you look at what we call your "Marketing Playing Field?" Did you do a gap analysis on your customers, competition, and competencies? What did you find?

Jason Fried:
Whenever we decide to build a product/service we first make sure it's something that we'd actually use ourselves. Just as you should invest in what you know, we think you should build what you'll use. When you build something you are going to use yourself you'll build it better. So that's where we started.

The competitive analysis phase revolved around shopping, not competition. Originally we weren't looking for something to compete against -- rather we were looking for something we could buy and use to manage our clients and projects. Once we couldn't find anything that satisfied our needs we decided to go out on our own and build Basecamp.

We also knew that we weren't special -- if we needed something better there had to be tens of thousands of other companies just like ours that were equally fed up with the current options on the market. And while we felt the assumption was correct, we did ask a fair number of our colleagues what they used, what they needed, and what they wanted. Our assumptions were confirmed -- there was nothing simple enough, fast enough, elegant enough, and flexible enough for a small firm to trust, use, and expose their clients to.

We also discovered that in many ways the size of your firm is inversely proportional to your expectations. The smaller and tighter your team, the higher your expectations for the products you purchase with your limited resources (you really need to make your expenditures count). We
knew this market would take notice and be loyal to a quality product.
So, while we didn't perform a formal gap analysis, we did go through a
similar, albeit more organic process.

Marketing Playbook:
So you really started with your own needs as a company. How did you go from there? How did you think about the competition?

Jason Fried:
Yeah, we originally built Basecamp as our own internal project management tool. It wasn't until we started showing early beta versions to some colleagues and clients that we started hearing "wow, I need something just like this" or "can we use this too?" or "you read our mind," etc. So, after a couple of days of brainstorming, we decided that we would turn Basecamp into a full-fledged ASP-model product/service.

We checked out the competition a little more, but we didn't feel like we were trying to beat any specific product -- rather we were trying to beat the general level of clutter, complexity, and misplaced priorities that we felt existed in the marketplace. We saw a lot of project management apps focused on stats and charts and graphs. We knew from experience that projects don't fail from a lack of graphs and charts, they fail from a lack of communication. So we decided that Basecamp was going to be built around making internal and client communication as simple and effective as possible. One of our development mantras is "Project management is communication."

You know, it's not that the other products out there were bad, it's just that we felt they were overkill and confusing. We wanted to build something focused, simple, and clear. So, I guess you could say we were competing with a different point of view of what makes project management software useful.

Finally, we wanted to get the clients involved in the management of their projects. A lot of software project management apps (like Microsoft Project, for example) are one-sided -- the firm handles the entire project management process. We wanted to give the clients a tool that they could use as well. When they're involved in the management of their project they feel a greater sense of ownership, and that often leads to a better experience and product in the end. Plus, a great project management tool increases client loyalty.

Stay tuned for the second half of this discussion...

Is it a bus or a modern ground transport?

I remember taking the bus home from college quite often (especially when I needed my mom to bake something or clean something). Not always the most pleasant experience - but always great social (or sociology) event.

Well, it appears that greyhound is running a new campaign to attract college kids.

Peter Davidson, points out that maybe they ought to be thinking about their product gaps first. Do they know what college students are like now? Maybe instead of big splashy ad dollars they should put in power outlets and wireless broadband. That might create some buzz and lasting loyalty instead.

Features are great - if they yield something

.... like a benefit.

For every new feature you need to... (Signal vs. Noise)

Great post from Jsaon at 37 Signals on the importance of managing feature creap. Approach sounds similar to how you manage marketing campaign. Think first, don't do what you don't need to. And don't push until you know who you're pushing to with what and why they might go for it.

Good food for thought for our next book (The Product Playbook)

More fun with packaging

Here are two fun recent entries on fun packaging
• Brand autopsy highlights hilarious Heinz labels submitted by customers like "For best results, eat."
• Wonderbranding found these really cool plastic shopping bag holders. Not only are they functional but they act as paid billboards. Talk about beyond broad reach.

Packaging as Poetry

plastic bottle lovely
attracting a waiting eye
now wallet open

OK, it's not very good, but the packaging of ITO En's new quietly delicious teas sure is. And each bottle comes with it's own Haiku, the results of a terrific contest with truly amazing prizes and real honors.

Here's another terrible attempt:

positive feelings
conversations as products
customers blissful

Yep. Makes sense to me.

gapingvoid: all products are conversations

Another great one from Hugh Macleod.

Call to action - push my buttons

Several sites have been highlighting these cool doorbells by SpOre. BoingBoing of course posted them. And Peter Davidson wrote a nice note about the importance and work required for great design: "It's not enough to be well designed. These days to be remarkable for the right reasons you need to be fully designed and thought out."

Great design and packaging are topics we are passionate about. They make a huge difference. They generate attention, they invite action.

I know, we have this doorbell in green at home. We love it. At night it is like a little beacon for visitors. But we also hate it. It's also an irresistable beacon for our two young boys when they are tearing around the house. It says "Press me over and over one million times" to them. And believe me they do.

Form, function, and a really straight-forward name

Apple does it again. They take something kinda complicated and boring (802.11g) and make it small, simple, and elegant. It's called Airport Express. It's for Mac and PC. Integrates with iTunes - now "Airtunes", acts as a wireless repeater, and more. It's white for now but look for the cool colors soon (?). And what a nice example of solid product naming. Simple, straightforward and cool.

Strategize has a bunch of details. As do Signal vs. Noise and Gizmodo.

More on Billg's blog talk

A bunch more folks have been talking about Microsoft, Billg and blogging (see previous entry on Whether MSFT is late to the blog party). Here are some of them:

Bill on Blogs :: jr conlin's Ink Stained Banana Ink stained banana wonders if this is a harbinger of more boring things to come. He wishes that companies would take blogs seriously as real tools, but is concerned that all we will get is corporate blogs “where anonymous corporate mouthpieces shill out the same sort of stuff that goes to Business Wire.” The unsanctioned blogs will always be more interesting and reflective of the reality of companies.

Portention's entry has a pretty contentious discussion. To billg’s comments "What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate... The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it." Neil Art basically say’s “Duh.” He also wonders whether Microsoft is going to build or buy blog-related software, and if so from whom?

Trevor Cook basically notes that despite the kinda obvious stuff Billg said, it really does seem that something can't be taken seriously on the Internet as a business topic until the guy from Redmond signals his interest.

Marcie Robillard (aka Datagrid Girl) wonders why Steveb and Billg still don’t have blogs of their own. “Even to pull an Eric Rudder and only post once per quarter would be HUGE coming from these two guys.” She notes that we really want to hear what they have to say “At a minimum, please consider offering the speech transcripts as an RSS feed... Why not put your billions where your mouth is?”

Finally Dadblog is actually happy that Bill Gates is explaining "in language CEOs understand why blogging and RSS could equal a cool information dissemination tool."

Again, late to the party maybe, but interesting to watch for sure. If if makes blogging more accessable to more people, then all the better. In my humble opinion.

Ultimate ABCs and XYZs, an example

PR Communications: Finding an unmet need

Here's an entry about a company marketing a product in a category we will all face eventually - death. What simple gap analysis ABCs and positioning XYZs.

A. Yes, you die (everyone does, ultimately). Away from home.
B. But, you want your ashes back where you belong, and your urn won't make it past airport security X-rays.
C. So, you need a better way (FedEx just might not seem appropriate).

Now, a company has come up with a new product that can address this unmet need, and a simple, compelling positioning.

X funeral urns for
Y loved ones coming home that
Z don't have to go into checked luggage.

It don't amount to a hill of beans unless...

VentureBlog: Brand Follows User Experience

All the positioning XYZs, market ABCs, great promotion, smart plays, guerilla marketing, cool names and snazzy branding - in the long run - just won't cut it if the product sucks.

Lots of companies get big with products that aren't the absolute best, but as VentureBlog points out the value of the brand quickly declines if the user experience goes too far down hill. Frankly this is true not just in high tech but in any industry. And for start-ups your reputation and the product experience is all you have for a brand. The positive, hot brands of today have to keep it up to keep their brands as assets.