This is Testnet, where crypto-native marketing and growth experiments are tested live. Every week I review an aspect of a crypto brand's marketing strategy.
How do you capitalize on loneliness?
There was a great edition of Boys Club's Too Online newsletter that touched on the loneliness epidemic that the new AI companion "friend" has brought to light.
A quote from the newsletter: "capitalism, she knows no bounds." The loneliness problem that so many young people face today is being addressed not as a public health crisis, but as a new market with new products.
Today's new loneliness epidemic band-aid is a necklace that listens to your conversations and texts funny quips to engage with you like a "real" friend might.
This week: using rage bait to increase viewership and clicks, and, therefore, product purchases.
friend: rage bait as engagement bait
A new product has shaken the internet, and its marketing is too interesting to ignore: friend.
With a whopping 23 million views on the announcement, friend certainly riled up a lot of people. But that, I'd argue, is the goal. The more people angrily quote-tweeting your product or sending it in their group chat to rant about, the better the engagement and the more people are going to buy it.
The fastest way to reach new peoples' feeds is to get other people angry/upset/fox news pundit style fuming, and therefore just about dare them to comment on or quote tweet your post.
That's what new AI wearable "friend" did with their recent ad, so subtly that it doesn't even look like rage bait from the outside.
Here's the announcement:
11.2K
This is rage bait because the product is attempting to solve a controversial problem (young people not being able to talk to "real people" anymore because we're all so addicted to our screens) with a controversial solution (an AI imaginary friend that allows listens to you and spits out AI-generated commentary).
The comments were rampant. The product was everywhere. But in the attention economy, all press really is good press.
Notable choices made
Announcement came from a founder account, not a brand account. (In fact, they don't even have a brand twitter account!)
Link in the first tweet (did not stop the algo from pumping, so maybe links in tweets aren't the devil incarnate?)
No product description—you have to watch the video in entirety to understand what it is. (And then if you're like me you're still a little confused tbh.)
The blog pulls on your heartstrings, with the founder addressing the problem head-on. Notable sentence: "friend is an expression of how lonely I've felt."
Personifiying the friend with language
friend took rage bait one step further by personifying the friend, or making it seem like a sentient being. One of the creepiest things is when they refer to the friend as having "free will." Check out this clip from their FAQ:
The company says they gave the friend "their own internal thoughts." Every word in this phrase is doing major work for the overall feeling that the friend is a real, sentient being. "their" = personified, "own" = an entity capable of ownership, "internal," = private to them, not fed in by the company, "thoughts" = the ability for the AI companion to reason on their own.
This kind of all-in marketing is really interesting to me. They're committing to the bit in every way. They want you to believe this friend is sentient, so even their FAQ page is going to use language that lines up with that.
How can you learn from this for your own project?
Be dystopian. Go to the most futuristic and dystopian level, and communicate that as your product's end state: not its current state. And, commit to the bit while you're at it.
Be unique. Find the most unique, out-of-the-box aspects of your product and focus on highlighting those, not necessarily the most "mainstream."
Be controversial. Don't be afraid to take a stance that some might deem overly controversial. If you try to please everyone, you'll please no one.
Marketing tidbit: don't compete in the long tail
In this newsletter, Seth Godin discusses how the cost of creation has gone to zero. Anyone can create a video, write a book, or design artwork and post it online and reach distribution.
He writes,
"Two things have changed for books, music and visual media:
Shelf space and broadcast schedules disappeared. There’s room for everything, all the time.
The cost of creating and publishing work in any of these media has dropped to zero. When anyone can make a video or a song, anyone will."
Especially with the onset of AI-generated content, marketing could reach a quality trap, where everything is AI gibberish and nothing speaks to real humans. With over 600 million blogs and counting posted on the internet, you're not going to be able to compete in quantity.
If you can't compete in volume, you need to compete in quality.
The good thing is that quality is difficult, and if you put more time and effort into it, you'll come out on top.
There will always be room at the top—you just have to get there.
This week's vibe: armchair quarterbacking
The Olympics are a fun time because everyone gets to be an armchair quarterback for sports they've never seen before. That's the power of great announcers—you can get up to speed on a sport very quickly. I'm amazed at how I can sit down and watch surfing or skateboarding and suddenly understand the intricacies of the rules because of a skilled announcer who talks the audience through it.
And then, after a short time, we all become armchair quarterbacks—or people who comment on games and say what they believe the players should have done, even if they're not in the game themselves.
I believe it's human nature to go from knowing nothing about a thing, to acting like the "expert" in no time. That's why there are so many memes about immunology experts becoming war experts becoming middle east experts, depending on the current news of the moment. Everyone wants to have an opinion on the current thing.
And that's okay! That's what makes life fun. Shouting "that was a terrible wave to choose!" when you have no idea how to even stand up on a surfboard. Getting into a heated debate about Israel-Palestine even though you were a Biology major. Having opinions and beliefs, and learning how to change them, is what makes humans so awesome.
The key is not taking your own opinion too seriously. After all, the judges might have rated that floor routine higher than you would have, and you're not the expert—they are.
See you next week!
Sam
